I stand in awe of teachers. I really do. Especially city teachers, or any teacher in a low-income neighborhood. Especially any teacher in a low-income neighborhood that is teaching at a public school and thus has the spectre of No Child Left Behind hanging above her/his head all the time!
I mean honestly, how do you deal with that? Well, Jonathan Kozol has some advice. He is of course the educational activist most famous for his book Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. That book looked at race and class based economic disparities in American schools. His new book is quite a bit more personal. It’s a series of letters he wrote to a young teacher during her first year in a Boston Public School. It’s his advice to a young teacher about how to succeed not only winning the attention of the students–but also how to maintain a sense of whim and imagination in a world obsessed with test results. It’s called Letters to a Young Teacher.
What do you think?
Poll: Do you think No Child Left Behind has been good or bad for our schools?
Poll: What do you think of Kozol’s advice that teachers subvert NCLB in any way possible?
Enjoy the hour.
-Jessica
