I didn’t post all day yesterday because I was on the move, following Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty on a school visit in East Harlem in the morning, checking in on Vice President Joe Biden’s speech in Midtown in the afternoon, and chatting with charter school operators from New Jersey at a bar late into the evening.
I’ll have plenty of reports next week, but for now I want to share one exchange I observed during the morning school visit that’s missing from Javier Hernandez’s account in today’s Times. In the same class where Fenty described eating hot dogs with President Obama, Klein asked the children to name their favorite thing about their school. Their answers: Gym, art, music, assembly, “choice time” when they play games every Friday, and “cook shop,” where the class simulates a restaurant.
Klein then revealed his own favorite thing about the school: “You have great teachers, a great principal, and great students, and that really matters.” Then the two school leaders and their retinue moved on.