14th June 2006

Fires in the Bathroom

posted in books, leadership, politics |

I’m thinking a lot about education reform since our EdTechTalk Sunday night, which ended up focusing on policy-level questions towards the end of our conversations. Tonight I read Mike Muir’s blog post about the book “Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students” by Kathleen Cushman and Lisa Delpit. This book sounds like exactly the sort of thing our school board members and state/national legislators should be reading. Let’s listen more to the students and the teachers, and less from the pundits and politicians.

Definitely check out the accompanying website, What Kids Can Do. From the Neighborhood Story Project to Adobe Youth Voices, this is a website tied to issues that students care about and adults should take notice.

I also enjoyed the following reflection from Mike Muir in the same post:

It makes me think about Dennis Littky’s saying: If we love kids more than we love schools, then we have to change schools. And it makes me think about Al Gore’s saying: Change is inconvenient (his context is the environment, but mine is education).

Sadly, I think many politicians DO NOT love kids more than they love getting re-elected. Maybe you and I should both read “Fires in the Bathroom” and then send a copies to our local legislators or school board members. Afterwards, we could setup a literature circle to discuss and action plan. Sound far fetched? Remember Margaret Mead’s quotation:

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

We may be a small group in the edublogosphere, but our numbers are growing along with our resolve. I’m going to keep speaking out. You should too.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 11:59 pm and is filed under books, leadership, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 3 responses to “Fires in the Bathroom”

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  1. 1 On June 15th, 2006, Change Agency - Advocating a better education system for the 21st Century. » Student voices about teaching and learning said:

    [...] Moving at the Speed of Creativity » Blog Archive » Fires in the Bathroom [...]

  2. 2 On June 15th, 2006, Mike Muir said:

    There is a companion book: SENT TO THE PRINCIPAL: Students Talk About Making High Schools Better by Kathleen Cushman and the students of What Kids Can Do. Also, the What Kids Can Do web site has the Students as Allies in Improving Their Schools with lots of ideas, tools, and resources to involve students in making their own schools better!

  3. 3 On June 15th, 2006, Stephanie Sandifer said:

    In the 2003-2004 school year our faculty read Fires in the Bathroom and a group of students on our campus participated in the Students As Allies project by developing a campus-specific climate survey and administering it to a random selection of students across our campus.

    It was a fantastic project and gave us great insight into what our kids thought about our school.

    You can access the final report from our district (which includes a summary of the results from our campus) on the Students As Allies site.