UNESCO's Celebration of World Teachers Day

Today is the sixteenth UNESCO celebration of World Teachers Day. The celebration is intended to spotlight the importance of the world's teachers, and bring awareness to all those students worldwide who are in need of teachers.

So, today, take the opportunity to sincerely thank a teacher, and tell them just how much of a positive influence they have had on your life, and how much you appreciate all they do to make the world a little bit better. It could be your teacher, your child's teacher, or a friend who is a teacher.

If you would like to know more about UNESCO's celebration of World Teachers Day, here is a link to an article: 2015 World Teachers Day.

Chalkboard Champion Leonard Covello: He Created the Ultimate Union Between School and Home

Here's a great book for anyone who is interested in progressive education or pluralism in education: Leonard Covello and the making of Benjamin Franklin High School: Education as if Citizenship Mattered. 

Leonard Covello came to the United States in 1896 as a nine-year-old Italian immigrant. Despite immense cultural and economic pressures at home, Leonard wanted to get an education. As an adult, he analyzed these cultural and economic pressures, which were common in Italian immigrant households at that time. He realized that Italian parents viewed the school as a wedge between their children and the family; he recognized the pressure even the youngest Italian children faced to go out and get a job rather than succeed in school. His answer? Involve the parents in the school, and involve the students in the community. The result was New York's Benjamin Franklin High School, a truly innovative union of school and home. Lots of lessons in this story are relevant even in today's times, especially for school personnel who are clamoring for more involvement from parents in the school system.

You can find this eye-opening book on amazon.com at the Leonard Covello link. You can also read the abbreviated version of Leonard Covello's life story in Chalkboard Champions: Twelve Remarkable Teachers Who Educated America's Disenfranchised Students.