Dinner with Deborah

   I am excited that tomorrow I will be having dinner with Deborah Meir. She is coming to speak at our Best Practices Conference. It isn’t every day you get to dine with a legend in education. Deborah has been teaching for four decades and has started some of the most profound conversations in education in recent years.

It was with great interest that I read about her experiences in creating a school in East Harlem when I was near the beginning of my teaching career. The students in her school, ninety percent of them, graduated and went on to four-year colleges. She inspired many of us to stay in teaching at times when it was quite difficult.

As a special education teacher in rural Ontario and south Tucson, I took her message of hope and trust in the dignity of her students with me into all my classrooms. I like to think that I still do now that I teach pre-service teachers in Michigan.

To read more about her, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Meier.