Back to School

Bill Resnick talks to Elizabeth Thiel, President of the Portland Association of Teachers, who led the union in their effort to create a safe and teachable reopening of the schools. They discuss what teachers, the community, and especially parents discovered in the long period of distance learning, for one that children and adolescents need teachers, not just computerized materials, and secondly, how good teaching is a combination of knowledge, skill, art, patience, respect and democratic relationships. Finally they discuss how the union and teachers are attempting to build engaging project-centered curriculum and nurturant schools with smaller classes.