“We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school.”

From No Surrender by Bruce Springsteen

How many more children must we watch drift into adulthood, left to wax poetic (and platinum) about a hollow school experience, before we fix education in this country? The answer, I suppose, is blowing on the backstreets.

Last year as a teacher-in-training in the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR) I worked with a group of folks who are giving everything they have to do right by the students of Boston Public Schools. When we graduated in July, I was honored to be one of two residents chosen by our peers to deliver a commencement address. It includes some of my ideas about education and justice in the United States. No Springsteen references, but a nod to Joe Strummer, and some back-story about the phrase we lifted for our album title. You can download it here.