This is a sad and ugly day in Chicago as the announcement has come that 50 schools will close this summer, primarily in neighborhoods populated by low income African-American families. We mark this moment — as we continue to share the voices of good, skilled, caring teachers who continue to make a difference for kids no matter what.

Kay McSpadden is a South Carolina high school English teacher who writes frequent columns on education for the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Often her columns excoriate legislators and public officials for enacting policies that damage public education as they propose to help it. But she also writes beautifully about the learning that happens in her classroom, as this column from July 2012 demonstrates.

Let’s not allow Kay McSpadden to speak up alone.