Florida teacher of fifteen years, David Menasche, has brain cancer in advanced stages. At the end of years of treatment, he’s decided to spend what are likely his last days traveling the country, meeting his former students. He wants to see what became of them and find out what kind of difference he made in their lives.

This is an amazing venture, and his video is worth watching for the example it sets of strength of human spirit. It’s also interesting, because of what he finds about the difference his students tell him he made for them, or at least what they remember of it. What does this say about measuring good teaching? How do students’ memories of us years correlate to the impact we had on them, both while we were teaching them and long term? I hope we’ll hear a lot more from Menasche about what he finds.

Watch a quick news segment about him here: CLICK

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Ariel Sacks

Ariel Sacks began her 13-year teaching career in New York City public schools after earning her master’s degree at Bank Street College and has taught and coached in grades 7-9. She is the author of Whole Novels for the Whole Class: A Student Centered Approach (Jossey-Bass, 2014) and writes a teaching column for Education Week Teacher.

Ariel’s work as a teacher leader with the Center for Teaching Quality involved her in co-authoring Teaching 2030: What We Must Do For Our Public Schools – Now and in the Future. She was also featured in the CTQ book Teacherpreneurs: Innovative Teachers Who Lead Without Leaving.

She is currently working on a book about the role of creative writing in equitable, 21st century schools, and she speaks and leads workshops on the whole novels approach.

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