WaBATS are Leading a Movement: #EducatingGates Foundation Rally – June 26th!
Dear Bill and Melinda,
Katie and I would like to extend an invitation to both of you to join us at the Gates Foundation in a movement started by teachers and hosted by the Washington Badass Teachers Association on June 26th in Seattle. This is an important event in your lives, one that will be part of your legacy. Of course it will also be important for you to be there in person to receive our published Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates in a free printed copy of all of the heart-felt letters teachers have written to you over the first year of our blog to you.
Our blog anniversary date is coming up on June 9th. That day, one year ago, we invited you and Melinda to join us in a dialogue. The day before, Linda Shaw of the Seattle Times wrote this piece: “Gates Foundation looking to make nice with teachers“.
“Five years into the second phase of its mission to overhaul America’s public schools, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is moving to work more closely with teachers, generating interest but also wariness because of past hostilities.”
Irvin made that day: “We’re trying to start a movement,” Scott told the teachers in Scottsdale. “A movement started by you. A movement you’re leading.” The reforms your foundation has sponsored have indeed started a movement, but perhaps not the one you intended. There are scores of organizations working to support public schools, to oppose high stakes tests and the Common Core. Even Louis CK has joined in the fight!
So I guess we can say you (via Irvin Scott) were right! You started a movement and we are leading! With the spirit of that movement, we’d like to celebrate our one year anniversary WaBATS are Leading a Movement: #EducatingGates Foundation Rally – June 26th! | Teachers' Letters to Bill Gates: