HOUR ONE:
We wrap up National Teacher Appreciation Week with several interviews about education and schools. Bob talks with Jason Kamras about being named the National Teacher of the Year in 2005 and we get an update on what he’s been doing over the past decade. We’ll also hear from former teachers Ninive Clements Calegari and Daniel Moulthrop co-authors of a book titled Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers.
Bob talks with Rafe Esquith a fifth grade teacher at a public school in Los Angeles, the only teacher in history to receive the National Medal of the Arts. Esquith has written several books including Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire, Lighting Their Fires: Raising Extraordinary Children in a Mixed-up, Muddled-up, Shook-up World and a book of advice titled Real Talk for Real Teachers.
Bob talks with Irish writer Frank McCourt – who won the Pulitzer Prize for his first book, Angela’s Ashes. He died in 2009, but Bob spoke with McCourt about his memoir Teacher Man, which focuses on his three decades spent teaching English in New York City’s public school system. Then, Bob talks with another former teacher. Taylor Mali is now an advocate for teachers and a poet who defended his profession with the poem and the book titled What Teachers Make.
HOUR TWO:
May 6th would have been the 100th birthday of Orson Welles. Perhaps the most influential director in film history, Welles nonetheless suffered numerous setbacks in his career as he battled studio heads who withheld money and support… and the stigma of appearing overweight and washed-up as a television pitchman in the 1970’s. Joseph McBride hopes to set the record straight with his third and most recent book on the enigmatic auteur, entitled What Ever Happened To Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career. Then, Bob talks with Chris Welles Feder about her dad – his devotion to his art, and his distance from his family. Welles Feder is the author of In My Father’s Shadow.
I am incredibly disappointed that in an hour of talking to and about teachers, only one female teacher was included It is not uncommon in schools for male teachers to be recognized and honored at a greater rate than female teachers, and this program has just reinforced that experience. Maybe it is time to interview some remarkable female teachers for next year's teacher episode.