Q&A: Books, blogs help teacher reach beyond Sacramento classroom
mgutierrez@sacbee.com
PUBLISHED MONDAY, MAR. 14, 2011
Sacramento teacher Larry Ferlazzo uses the written word to share what he's learned in the seven years since he left his job as a community organizer to become an English teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento.
Ferlazzo, 51, has two successful blogs and an active Twitter account, and his third book – "Helping Students Motivate Themselves" – is due out next month.
He started a blog, Websites of the Day, four years ago to share best practices of using technology with English-language learners. The blog now has 25,000 daily subscribers. In this interview, he discusses his upcoming book and education issues.
When you got into teaching, did you know the kind of school where you wanted to teach?
I wanted to teach in an urban en- vironment. I was particularly interested in working with immigrant students. My parents were immigrants and most of my organizing career was in urban communities.
My father was from Italy and my mother from Trinidad … . My father actually began working as a linguistics professor at Rutgers, but he decided he wasn't making enough money to support a family so he worked for a big