Letters to a Young Teacher

Kozol is thrilled that Francesca will get to follow her class to the next grade, a process known as looping. Francesca is no longer a beginner teacher—she has shown authority and empowerment in her classroom. Other new teachers often don’t thrive in the same way because of demands to conform to accountability regimes and difficulties reconciling themselves to the segregation and inequality in their schools. Kozol recommends that teachers speak out against the problems in their schools rather than remain silent.

Kozol was overly timid as a young teacher. Toward the end of his teaching year in Roxbury, he felt emboldened to bring in a book of poetry by a Black poet, Langston Hughes. The children enjoyed and related to the poetry, but Kozol was fired for “curriculum deviation” (197). After Kozol discussed his firing with Jim Breeden, a priest and community leader, word spread and Kozol was asked to attend a church meeting with many parents and some students to describe his experience and the conditions at the school. The community rallied to Kozol’s support and protested his firing. Kozol stresses that parents can tell when a teacher has their children’s best interests at heart regardless of ethnicity. The author does not recommend that teachers go out and lose their jobs; rather, he wants teachers to navigate the contradictions of their roles without forgetting about their calling as educators. Good teachers find a way to insert their voice and creativity in a classroom regardless of curriculum requirements.

Kozol wants teachers to be more political, meaning that teachers must learn what they can do to change the status quo. He laments that many teachers don’t know what actions they can practically take to affect change. He regrets that some teachers are educated to remove their own beliefs and private lives from the classroom and insists that teachers should be willing to discard professional decorum in favor of the ability “to act, no matter what their shyness or their modest self-effacement, as outspoken warriors for justice” (208).

Kozol’s gloomy experiences with public schools and administration don’t make him depressed because he finds spiritual nourishment in “glowingly resilient children” who “retain their faith in the essential goodness of the grown-up world” (210).

One such student was Pineapple, a child leader in her neighborhood who remained friends with Kozol when she became a teenager. Another example is the way a class coped with a tragic event: A child needlessly died by falling down an elevator shaft due to neglect on the part of the building owner. That child’s classmates made Kozol feel welcome during his class visit after the death without lingering on the sadness—an experience that makes Kozol “feel ashamed of [his] own periodic moments of self-pity and it clears [his] spirits of depression and morbidity” (217).

The students’ lovely parents and grandparents also keep Kozol from spiraling into the abyss. He turns to his friendship with grandparent Bernice King when he is in low spirits or is having personal problems. Friendships like this one provide mutual nourishment and keep Kozol from feeling hopeless.

Kozol concludes his letter by asserting that “the work of a good teacher ought to be an act of stalwart celebration […] in that celebration good teachers find their reward” (226-27). Teachers must defend and revel in the fleeting beautiful moments that children provide.

Kozol’s final letter explains that he won’t be able to write to Francesca for a while and discusses his recently deceased friend Fred Rogers. He praises Mr. Rogers’s kind and compassionate manner with children and teachers and reminisces about their correspondence. Kozol underscores “the emphasis Mr. Rogers used to place on leaving open space and open time for children to express themselves and, when they do, the need for us to listen to them carefully” (234). Mr. Rogers was not in the least bit interested in the test scores or the productivity of the children he met.

Kozol concludes his final letter to Francesca by imploring her to continue reveling in the “joy and tenderness that brings good people to the task of teaching in the first place” (237-38) and thanking her for teaching him more than he ever taught her.