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Monday, November 19, 2007

For all you young revolutionaries in training, an evening with Jonathan Kozol

I would hate to be confused with those of you who habitually stalk innocent authors and activists or whatever, but I was able to find a front row seat at this event Thursday evening in front of Jonathan Kozol's name plate...and snuck a picture before security dragged me away kicking and screaming... Okay, I made that last part up. And that's Kathleen Blake Yancey hiding behind those flowers too. I also came away from the convention with an autographed copy of Letters to a Young Teacher. To date, the highlights of my own quiet protest to NCLB mandates have been to encourage a seasoned teacher, who was informed that after 30-some years in the classroom that he was not highly qualified, that he really ought to chain himself to his desk or something. "Come on, man," I told him, "You're from the sixties. All us young(er) teachers need some role models." Well, he didn't do it, as I'm sure you've noticed because you would have seen it in the news, but I still held out hope until the whole thing was worked out pretty much peacefully (if you consider the demoralizing of a master teacher peaceful). Anyway, the speech was as incredible as anyone who's ever read any of Jonathan Kozol's work might imagine. Thanks for the ticket, Liz!!!!

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Robin,
Was there by any chance a podcast of this speech? Some of my preservice teacher read Kozol's book and were appalled at what they read. I would love for them to actually hear his voice.

Sandra aka miztech

12:10 PM  
Blogger Robin said...

I'm not aware of a podcast of the speech, but it certainly was powerful to actually hear his voice. A distillation of the speech he gave was printed in the form of an article called "Wildflowers" in Random House, Inc. magazine (volume 2, issue No. 1). I've been throwing it in front of everyone I can. We should all be appalled. Which book did your preservice teachers read?
Robin

11:30 PM  

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