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Montana Voices: From out on the sidewalk, an open letter to Montana teachers

If statistics for Montana overall apply in your community, 1 in 7 of those children lives in poverty; 43 percent come from low-income families. One in 4 lives in a single-parent household. An ever-rising number are homeless and/or the victims of neglect or abuse. Many have never been read to, sung to, or taught to count. All these factors pose a heightened challenge for you when it comes to reaching and teaching them. But you already know that.

As Neal Postman memorably wrote, "Our public schools don’t just teach the public. They create one." The public school experience is the only time Americans in this increasingly diverse country spend significant, formative time with other Americans who have nothing more in common with them than a given time and space. So much depends on the understandings they develop in those 13 years. The bonds they form then interlace the fabric of our communities and our state. As a teacher in a public school, you are literally creating the community of tomorrow.

By Mary Sheehy Moe

Montana Voices: From out on the sidewalk, an open letter to Montana teachers

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