Changing lives, changing schools, indeed—any impact I have had on changing schools in any way is because Ted and Nancy Sizer changed my life and growth as an educator. In the summer of 1986, I was living temporarily in New York City and thinking about the ways that the big, traditional high school I was working at outside of Boston
I began my professional life as a bilingual high school teacher in Boston before there was actually much formal “bilingual education” to be had. A small group of great teachers and a hundred willing students new to the United States, we made the best of our city, its people, and its places to help understand the world’s big ideas, and