Letters to a Young Teacher

Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher, originally published in 2007, is a collection of letters containing Kozol’s teaching advice for a new first grade schoolteacher named Francesca. The format of this book is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous Letters to a Young Poet, which has become a model for advice books for young people in different professions and callings. Although some identifying elements have been changed, the book’s letters represent a real correspondence that Kozol had with a primary school teacher, one of many such correspondences the author has had throughout his long career.

Kozol, one of the most celebrated progressive educators in America, is a National Book Award-winning author, educator, and progressive activist, who has written dozens of books primarily about the American education system. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, and the Deborah Meier Hero in Education Award from The National Center for Fair & Open Testing. Other works by this author include Savage Inequalities, Fire in the Ashes, and The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.