An Interview with Jonathan Kozol

Hooray for Monday is a weekly blog filled with questions, ideas, reflections, and actions we can all take to remodel the school experience for students. Prefer audio? Listen to the Hooray For Monday podcast! Available on your favorite platforms here.

February 26, 2024

By Aleta Margolis, President and Founder

I had already been a teacher in Washington, DC and in Illinois when author and activist Jonathan Kozol’s book Savage Inequalities came out. What he described in vivid detail in those pages was a reality that was troubling me as I was making my way through those early years of the profession.

He shone a light on both the problems and the promise of education in a nation that aspires to provide schooling for all its children but does so with great inequity. So when I had the opportunity to redesign the Schools and Society course I was teaching at American University in 1995, I built the curriculum around that book.

Throughout the nearly 30 years I’ve run Center for Inspired Teaching, Mr. Kozol has been the steady voice in my ear reminding me that this quest to make engaging, creative, inspiring teaching the norm rather than the exception for all children and to support all teachers in this aim — is a worthy, and indeed necessary, lifelong quest. It has been his lifelong quest.

So I was honored to be given a draft of his new book, An End to Inequality, to read, and even more so, to be able to interview him about this extraordinary work — one he says will be his last. It is a culmination of a lifetime of research into what does and doesn’t make our schools work and a commitment to doing better by our young people.

I encourage you to listen to the full interview in the Hooray For Monday podcast here (and find the transcript, edited for clarity, here) and have included below a few excerpts that speak to the power of his message.

On the Goal of Public Education: “I wish that a healthy spirit of irreverence were an acceptable goal of public education. Especially in a nation where we’re faced with all kinds of dogmatic tyrannies right now. We don’t just need well skilled productive workers from our schools, we also need morally irreverent citizens in the United States. Not violent, not destructive, not cruel but capable of challenging any evil that’s right in front of their eyes.”

On “School Reform:”“I think we need a massive wave of skepticism [in response to the messaging coming from so-called school reformers that] people were too dumb for the past 2000 years to figure it out, but we just figured it out! And we turned it into 10 units of teaching. And we’re sending it to your school. And you better teach it!”

“I think what matters is that the teacher has a reasonably small class size in a safe and cheerful setting, that he or she is given a maximum chance to have a sense of joy about getting up on Monday morning and going there. It’s going to be an adventure. She and the children are going to explore the world. They’re going to explore their own possibilities. They’re going to not just study history but prepare to shape it themselves when they are 20 years older. Teaching and learning ought to be an adventure and that’s what I’d fight for.”

On Teacher Education: “I think the faculties in our schools of education need to elicit more from the would-be teachers by asking about: What do they love? Why do they want to be with children? Do they have a sense of humor? Are they able to laugh and smile at something that’s annoying and kind of screwy, which there’s a lot in the public system?”

“The goal of teacher education should be to encourage teachers to be as exciting and adaptable and always curious and not tyrannical. They should not feel bound to follow tyrannical instructions. And I think that means ultimately trying to fill our public schools with wonderful human beings and not just well-trained dutiful technicians of mechanical proficiencies, but people who can inflame excitement about learning in children.”

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Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication by Center for Inspired Teaching, an independent nonprofit organization that invests in and supports teachers. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Our mission is to create radical change in the school experience – away from compliance and toward authentic engagement.

Listen to This Issue of Hooray For Monday

InspiredTeaching · February 26, 2024: An Interview with Jonathan Kozol

Micaiah Anderson

Community Outreach Specialist

As a Community Outreach Specialist, Micaiah is responsible for program promotion and outreach support for Inspired Teaching events and workshops. Micaiah has a passion for collaborating with community members to build-power and connect. She is an educator with a heart for youth and has experience supporting students fight injustices within their schools and communities. She has a BA in Political Science from, the real HU, Hampton University & anticipates graduating in May 2024 with a Masters of Arts degree in Educational Policy Transformation from Georgetown University.

AUTONOMY

"I want to have a say in what happens to me."

Autonomy is the need for independence; the ability to make choices, to create, to explore, and to express oneself freely; to have sufficient space, to move around, and to feel unrestricted with opportunities to exercise free will.

Brady Maiden

Outreach Coordinator

As the Outreach Coordinator, Brady helps maintain Inspired Teaching’s social media presence and supports the organization’s mission to connect with DC community leaders, educators, and parents. Brady has her Master’s in Public Policy from George Mason University and her BS in Political Science from Northern Arizona University. She is passionate about community, equity, and coalition building recognizing that learning and growing with the community at large is how we continue to be impactful.

What brings you joy in life?

I find joy in spending time with my friends and family and meeting new people. I like going to concerts and festivals, and finding new books to read.

The Learner’s Cycle, Wonder-Experiment-Learn, and the Teacher’s Cycle, Observe-Plan-Instigate, comprise Inspired Teaching’s approach to engaging students in inquiry-based learning.

When they are engaged in the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, students are immersed in learning. They take the lead in designing authentic learning experiences around their own interests and their school’s standards of learning. Each discovery leads to a new question which in turn leads to more wondering and more learning. In the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, Learn is not a destination or an endpoint; it is a deeper understanding, leading to a deeper wondering and new possibilities that create new entry points to further exploration. The cycle continues because what students have learned generates more wonderings that require more experiments that foster more learning – and on and on.

The Observe-Plan-Instigate Cycle is the work of an Inspired Teacher. While a student is expected to follow the Wonder-Experiment-Learn Cycle, the teacher joins them on the learning journey while following their own cycle of Observe-Plan-Instigate. This cycle ultimately serves to ensure an inquiry-based atmosphere is at play in the classroom.

Jaqueta Abbey

Teaching and Learning Specialist

Jaqueta is the Teaching and Learning Specialist for Inspired Teaching. In addition to her current role with Inspired Teaching, Jaqueta is a first-grade teaching assistant. Her background features a variety of traditional and non-traditional experiences in the field of education, including working as an adjunct professor, teaching summer reading programs to children and adults, and tutoring children in the foster care system. Jaqueta earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.A. in Interactive Media from Elon University.

What brings you joy in life?

Creative self-expression! In addition to my passion for storytelling, I love dancing of all kinds. I've studied belly dance, bachata, and Brazilian Zouk among other styles. I also enjoy glass fusing, crocheting, photography, and cross stitching. These art forms allow me to express myself and build connections with other people at the same time. I think life would be a lot less vibrant without artists and storytellers!

Michelle Welk

Communication & Marketing Specialist

As Communications and Marketing Specialist, Michelle is responsible for finding and creating new ways to highlight Inspired Teaching and promote its programs in order to expand and deepen the organization's impact. Michelle has worked in communications in an array of settings, from creative agencies to state politics to national nonprofits. She has a BA in Journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia and is passionate about education, access, and equity.

What brings you joy in life?

My son, the beach, making a persuasive argument and good food!

Max Peterson

Real World History Assistant Teacher

Max received his Bachelor’s degree in History and African American Studies from Boston University in May 2016. He has worked in museum curation at the Museum of the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Max has worked with young people of varying ages from young children to young adults transitioning to college.

Feedback and Accountability

We grow through feedback and an understanding that the quality of our work is a reflection of what we are learning, but the shift to remote learning this spring disrupted a lot of the tools teachers were used to using to evaluate student growth. How might we do things differently this fall? Participants in this workshop will explore ways to bring meaningful assessment into the virtual and/or socially-distanced classroom and approaches to student feedback that strengthen motivation, and build relationships and achievement.