By Dmitri Mehlhorn | The Huffington Post
“I remember sitting on a makeshift wooden platform between the front seats of my mom’s old Volkswagen van. As the red VW grumbled through the streets of Richmond, California, in the 1970s, my mom told me about her work as a public school teacher. She was proud of her profession. She spent nights and weekends writing comments on student papers. Like her immigrant grandmothers, who’d been seamstresses in New York City, she was in a union. Over her 35 years teaching, she even became a union site rep.
By the time she retired, however, she was frustrated with her union and with public education. As a public school student who sent my own child to public school, I have tried to understand why. Over decades of study and hands-on learning, I have learned four things.”