Intended Audience

The primary audience for the book is educators, particularly those-in various roles-who have a desire for more student-centered, democratic schools. The book could be a gift to a young person about to enter a career in teaching who will get to see how a fellow teacher's career unfolded; it could be studied in teacher education courses, such as Foundations of Education, as a supplement to more theoretical texts; it could be read by a school leader looking for ideas on engaging at risk students in authentic intellectual processes relevant to their lives; it could be read by a group of teachers who want to create a new school looking for ideas both practical and ideological; and it's also for district level administrators and others in the education reform movement who want a fresh take on school change and the potential they have to support transformative efforts of on-the-ground education leaders.

The secondary audience for the book is members of the public who are not educators themselves, but who are interested in different visions of education. Perhaps they are parents, frustrated by their own schooling experiences and/or those of their children. Or these readers could be college students who have not yet chosen a career, but are oriented toward social justice, and want to see how a radical educator interacted with the traditional system in the 1960's and 1970s'.