What Went Right

In What Went Right: Lessons from Both Sides of the Teachers Desk co-authors Roberta Israeloff and George McDermott resume a conversation they began in 1967when she was in eleventh grade at Syosset (N.Y.) High School and he was her English teacher. In 2014, after finding each other on Facebook, they began an email correspondenceas contemporaries, rather than student and teacherand quickly discovered that neither had ever stopped thinking about that school and the many ways it influenced them. As they shared their impressions of how and why public education has changed since then, they realized that a single academic year can have a deeper and longer-lasting impact than they had ever imagined. Personal and probing, evocative and wide-ranging, the letters that compose this book ask and attempt to answer some timelessand timelyquestions: What makes a teacher or a class memorable? How can the teacher-student relationship be supported and strengthened? What does being educated truly mean? And, perhaps most important, what role can free public education play in sustaining our democracy?