So here’s our last message before the new year.

After urging everyone we could think of to get their voices out in public, it occurred to us that we hadn’t, ourselves, begun to practice what we were so incessantly pestering others to do. So we arranged, through an interested reporter to have 5 teachers meet Chicago Tribune journalists in an off-the-record roundtable session about 10 days ago. Since it was indeed off the record, we won’t recount the specifics, except to say that the teachers were extremely articulate and thoughtful, and the journalists seemed very open to their ideas. While some challenging issues were explored, it was clear that the Tribune staff were most impressed by the accounts of powerful classroom activity that the teachers described.

The journalists came away with a long list of potential stories, and they explained how to submit further story ideas. Perhaps the most telling item was that one editor revealed that his wife is a teacher — so we’re hopeful that it helps him understand some of the complexities of our work. We’ll watch to see what results we get.

Happy New Year to all. And write to tell us how you think we can advance this work in the coming year.