Letters to a Young Teacher

"I guess the message that I wish I could pass on to teachers who are entering the public schools for the first time is to enjoy what children say and not insist on what somebody tells us they're supposed to say. Celebrate words like "skinny" and "bamboozle" and "persnickety"! Leave "the six traits of effective writing" and the listings of "proficiences" to beureaucrats and literacy program planners in departments of curriculum. Don't inflict dead verbiage on living children. And no matter what a school system demands in terms of dreary mandates to remain eternally on task, leave time for the little Ariels and precocious little boys like Reginald who can't remember where they left their glasses to sneak up beside us anytime they want while we're engaged in something else and whisper us their secrets."

- Jonathan Kozol