Born to Polish immigrants in Detroit in June of 1914, Harriet Wojtowicz graduated from Detroit's Northeastern High School in 1931. She attended the University of Michigan receiving her A.B. in 1935 and her Master's in education in 1941. Following university, Wojtowicz began working as a Spanish teacher in the Detroit Public Schools and remained employed in this capacity until the mid-1970s. In the years leading up to her retirement, however, Ms. Wojtowicz became a target of disciplinary action on the part of the Detroit School Board after her controversial decision to refuse to use the board-approved Spanish textbooks put into use in the mid-1960s, citing them as being poor tools for foreign language education and not in the best interests of her students. This event, which led to Ms. Wojtowicz being reassigned in the system, led to a publicized campaign on her behalf conducted by her colleagues and friends, and was cited at the time as sparking the first grass-roots evaluation of course materials in the history of Detroit schools.
Wojtowicz was also an extensive traveler and spent time during her early academic career studying in Mexico. In the 1950s, she took two sabbaticals from teaching to study at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Seville in Spain. In 1961, she was awarded a Fulbright Exchange Fellowship and spent the year teaching English in Chile. Because of these trips, and the time spent with family members still in Poland, Wojtowicz met a number of people with whom she continued to contact late into her life. The result was a large collection of correspondence from across the world in a variety of languages.
From the guide to the Harriet Wojtowicz papers, 1915-2000, 1938-1988, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)
