Meier responded by saying that educators must “be a citizen of the world but also have a little tunnel vision about what you want to accomplish.”

“You have to have a picture in your head of what’s possible. But you don’t give up. Not ever,” Meier continued. “If people try to stop you here, you find a way to go over there. If they stop you there, you find a way to go here. A little civil disobedience. You never do something you know is wrong for children.”

And so began an intergenerational conversation among education reformers convened by National Louis University, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Golden Apple Foundation. Joining Meier and Kirby were veteran activists, authors and educators William Ayers, now retired from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Sonia Nieto of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Harold Levey, former Chancellor of NYC public schools.

The veterans shared their experiences and beliefs about staying engaged for the long haul in the hard work of school reform with five young and promising educators  including Kirby; Eve Ewing, a Pershing West Language Arts teacher in her third year; Ignacio Lopez, a National Louis professor and former teacher; Ky Adderley, founder and principal of a KIPP school in Brooklyn; and Melissa Barton, currently finishing her one-year teaching residency at Chicago Academy High School (operated by the Academy for Urban School Leadership). Barton will have her first solo classroom next year.

As planners of the event, my colleagues and I wanted to create an opportunity for such an inter-generational exchange, to bring together young people who are inheriting the world as it is with the people who, for better or worse, helped shape that world.  I want to advocate for more opportunities to have the generations come together and offer each other the perspective, hope and courage they need to persist over time. 

We all know there is no shortage of reasons to despair over the current state of schooling in America. While policymakers and pundits argue, point fingers and call each other names, children arrive by the millions every day at our school and classroom doors, each asking in his or her own way, "What have you got for me today? Give me your best shot. I don’t have much time."

In his book, So Much Reform So Little Change, University of Chicago professor of sociology Charles Payne stated our dilemma with chilling precision: "Change takes time and children don’t have it."  No one feels the magnitude of that truth more acutely than the students who bear the weight of the burden; or the parents who sent their children to school this morning; or the principals like Kirby and Adderley who watched the kids arrive; or the teachers like Ewing and Barton who looked them in the eye and searched for a way to say, I am ready for you, and I am ready for this day. It is arduous, complex work in the best of times.

Education is a profession that requires sustained apprenticeships and a continuous give-and-