Nettye Goddard's course description for her De Anza College class in African-American literature begins: "This course requires a lot of work — do it and you will learn more than you imagine."
She meant every word of it, former students say.
"She was a strict taskmaster, but they loved her," said professor Patricia Nichols, who worked with Goddard in the teacher education program at San Jose State University.
Goddard, a pioneering African-American teacher and administrator, was 87 when she passed away recently in San Jose. Until an illness, she lived in the east foothills dream home she designed and built with her late husband, George, a chemist, in 1965.
She leaves two daughters, Rosalind and Radcliffe, and legions of students whom she taught at Roosevelt Junior High School; at San Jose State University, where she taught in a student teaching program in the English
