What Went Right
Lessons from Both Sides of the Teacher's Desk
By (author) Roberta Israeloff, George McDermott
Publication date:
24 May 2017Length of book:
234 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
237x161mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781475834130
In What Went Right: Lessons from Both Sides of the Teacher’s Desk co-authors Roberta Israeloff and George McDermott resume a conversation they began in 1967—when she was in eleventh grade at Syosset (N.Y.) High School and he was her English teacher.
In 2014, after finding each other on Facebook, they began an email correspondence—as contemporaries, rather than student and teacher—and quickly discovered that neither had ever stopped thinking about that school and the many ways it influenced them.
As they shared their impressions of how and why public education has changed since then, they realized that a single academic year can have a deeper and longer-lasting impact than they had ever imagined.
Personal and probing, evocative and wide-ranging, the letters that compose this book ask and attempt to answer some timeless—and timely—questions: What makes a teacher or a class memorable? How can the teacher-student relationship be supported and strengthened? What does being “educated” truly mean? And, perhaps most important, what role can free public education play in sustaining our democracy?
In 2014, after finding each other on Facebook, they began an email correspondence—as contemporaries, rather than student and teacher—and quickly discovered that neither had ever stopped thinking about that school and the many ways it influenced them.
As they shared their impressions of how and why public education has changed since then, they realized that a single academic year can have a deeper and longer-lasting impact than they had ever imagined.
Personal and probing, evocative and wide-ranging, the letters that compose this book ask and attempt to answer some timeless—and timely—questions: What makes a teacher or a class memorable? How can the teacher-student relationship be supported and strengthened? What does being “educated” truly mean? And, perhaps most important, what role can free public education play in sustaining our democracy?
Roberta Israeloff and George McDermott have allowed readers an intellectually voyeuristic look into their thinking about education in a modern conversation that recalls their student-teacher interactions in a progressive high school in the late 1960’s to reach conclusions about education today. Do I agree with everything they say? Heck no! But that’s not a drawback; the authors would be quick to point out that their readers’ examining their own assumptions and arguments is in the spirit of their effort. They make their own assumptions and arguments in an engaging and thoughtful, yet highly personal social commentary that deserves consideration by students of school reform.