I do much of my lesson planning and thinking in the car traveling to and from the numerous outreach sites where I teach. As of late, my thoughts have drifted to what I should include in a blog related to literacy instruction. I found the answer for the topic of my first post tonight as I drove to Target. As you may already know, my car radio never leaves NPR. Tonight as I tuned in, Alternative Radio was broadcasting a repeat of Jonathan Kozol's address to Portland teachers on his 2005 book tour, The Shame of the Nation.
For those of you who don't know who he is, Kozol is one of my heros who has been working towards educational equity in America for over 50 years. He began as a substitute teacher in the Boston Public Schools just post the monumental Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas decision of 1955 and after graduating from Harvard. Having grown up in privilege, Kozol was amazed at the conditions of the school where he served as the 13th substitute that a fourth grade class had had that year. Though he did not have a background in education, he did his best to connect with his students, who were poor and underserved. He was eventually fired for using a Langston Hughs poem, The Ballad of the Landlord, which provided the backdrop material for his first book Death at an Early Age. He has since written over a dozen books including Savage Inequalities, Illiterate America, and Amazing Grace, in which he details the realities of metropolitan school systems.
I was fortunate enough to hear him speak in Milwaukee the fall after Shame came out, and later participate in a book club with my current colleagues and some teachers from Stritch's Masters in Urban Education students. During his address, he criticized the Bush administration for the perils of NLCB, particularly related to the inequity of quality early childhood programs and the unfairness of using the same methods of accountability testing for all kids, regardless of whether they were denied entrance to Head Start or attended a "Little Ivy" preschool. Milwaukee actually gets a shout out in thebook for its dedication to providing four year old kindergarten to most of our young urban students. (However, he does not mention that these classrooms often have underqualified teachers and up to 25 kids in each class, so the quality of the program can't be guaranteed.) He also provides data that compares the per pupil spending of urban vs. affluent community districts.
So what does this have to do with literacy? Listening to the voice of conviction made me want to reread the book and reminded me to sign up to see him this year when his new book is released. Everything about the book was meaningful to me that year. When I stood in line after his talk a few years ago, he asked me what I teach. I told him where I taught and how my school mirrors those he describes in his book, especially in that it was 99.5% African American (the subtitle of the book is "The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America"). I also shared with him the mantra students are expected to recite on a daily basis, which is another topic in his book. He looked up at me and said, with no sense of irony, "You must be very tired." It was one of the pivotal moments in making the decision to change my career path to involve direct contact with pre- and in-service teachers.
How many books have had an impact on your life in this way?
For more information about the broadcast, see: http://www.alternativeradio.org/programs/KOZJ003.shtml
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