To Create the World That Ought to Be: Memoirs of a Radical Educator Kindle Edition

To Create the World That Ought to Be explores enticing possibilities and proven solutions for transforming our society and ourselves, as viewed through the lens of the life and work of a celebrated visionary educator, Arnie Langberg. The book gathers insight distilled from the author’s 50-year career making change and empowering other changemakers through his work as a teacher, principal, and administrator of “alternative” public schools, and as a creative community organizer and provocative university professor in the US and around the world.This “hero’s journey” story manages to find realistic, road-tested reasons for hope, even while conducting a clear-eyed and penetrating investigation of the most daunting challenges of our times. One of the most precious and timely lessons we learn from this great teacher is that if we want our children to be the best human beings they can be, we need to create learning environments designed to foster that humanity — and, in that noble endeavor, our greatest resource is our own compassionate humanity.To Create the World That Ought to Be will appeal not only to anyone interested in learning, teaching, or education reform, but also to anyone keen to explore the dynamics of change — both in individuals and in society.Published by Earthville Press, a nonprofit publishing platform for world-changing ideas. ABOUT THE AUTHORArnie Langberg’s 50-year career in public education included serving as teacher, principal, administrator, and reformer. In 1957, he cofounded the Iota Society, an interdisciplinary learning program for students and their parents in New York. In 1970, he cofounded one of the first public alternative high schools in the USA, the Great Neck Village School. In 1975, Arnie became the first principal of Mountain Open High School in Colorado, which was praised as “a model for the reform of secondary education.”As Administrator of Alternative Education for Denver Public Schools, Arnie created a school for at-risk inner-city students, most of whom the conventional school system had abandoned, called High School Redirection, and served as its principal while also working with other Denver public schools. Arnie received the Colorado Governor’s Award for Educational Excellence in 1991.Arnie has consulted with schools and districts throughout the USA and abroad. He was an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Denver and at the University of Colorado, Denver. He was a Visiting Fellow at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, helping public schools redesign themselves.In 2001, Arnie partnered with the Denver Musicians Association to create the Harmony Project, which paired artists with classroom teachers to infuse music and other arts into the curriculum, resulting in dramatically improved student engagement.Arnie graduated from MIT, received an MA from Teachers College, Columbia, in 1972, and competed all but the dissertation requirement for a PhD at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Read more