[I hope this post proves interesting. It was written by Edwize blogger Leo Casey, and previously posted on Edwize.]

On the Disney Company's corporate website, the reader will find a honor roll of teachers from across the United States who have been recognized by the American Teacher Awards, starting with the first class of 1990 and concluding with the last class of 2006. A close examination will reveal that there is no teacher listed as the 1992 honoree in the category of Social Studies. Two of the three Social Studies finalists are listed, but the teacher who was actually named Social Studies Teacher of the Year is missing.*

I am that missing teacher. My name disappeared some time after I organized a public letter, signed by twenty-five American Teacher Award honorees, protesting Disney's sponsorship of John Stossel's Stupid in America, an ideological broadside against public education and the teachers who labor in our public schools.

The story begins in the fall of 1990, six years into my teaching career. I was teaching Social Studies at Clara Barton High School in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, and spending much of my free time preparing my Political Science class for participation in the national We The People competition. This was the third year of what would be a remarkable decade long run of Clara Barton classes in that competition: our classes -- entirely students of color, predominantly female and majority immigrant -- won the New York City championship every year, took the New York State championship in four of those years, and twice came in fourth in the entire nation. Immense amounts of work and effort went into preparing students for that competition, and the office of the then Congressman for our school, Major Owens, played a major role in bringing together judges and lawyers active in the community to conduct practice sessions. When the liaison from the Congressman's office asked me to apply for the American Teacher Awards, I did so more out of a sense of obligation to her than a belief that Disney would be interested in honoring a teacher of inner city students.

I was surprised, therefore, when I received notification that I was a finalist, and even more surprised when the crew which came to New York City to film my classes and my school did an excellent job of capturing the reality of our work at Clara Barton for a five minute television vignette. Watching it fifteen years later, I am struck at how the fruit of that work continues to blossom: the young African-American female student who speaks about how the Political Science class inspired her to direct her life in a positive fashion and consider a career in law is not only a lawyer, but the Educational Director of Legal Outreach, a program that provides legal education for New York City public school students.

When all of the finalists were assembled in Hollywood for the awards ceremony, modeled after the Academy Awards, I learned why our group reflected the diversity of American public education, with a number of us coming from inner city schools -- the selection committee was made up entirely of educators, drawn from past award winners and national educational organizations. It truly was a honor to be part of the 1992 class of honorees, and a thrill to receive my award from Morgan Freeman, whose work I have long admired. My mother, a retired New York City public school teacher who has since passed away, was able to attend the ceremony, which made it all that more memorable and moving an experience.

After our honorees delivered our acceptance speeches on national television, talking about the reality of our classes and schools, we wondered aloud to each other if Disney had any idea of what they had wrought when we were chosen. Whatever the reason, in subsequent years Disney first changed the method of selection and then stopped televising the awards ceremony, slowly eviscerating the American Teacher Awards until it ended them altogether in 2006.

As the nature of the American Teacher Awards changed and its profile diminished, my connection to it lessened, until all that was left was one of personal ties to my class of 1992. But early in 2006, as I spent a Friday night watching John Stossel's Stupid In America on Disney Corporation's ABC, I knew that the teachers who had been honored by the Disney's American Teacher Awards had a special responsibility to speak out against that demagoguery. Starting with just a handful of contacts, word of mouth and emails spread news of the letter of protest until 25 honorees had signed.

Neither Robert Iger nor the Disney Corporation ever answered our letter of protest. To date, the only response has been the one that removed my name as the Social Studies Teacher of the Year from the list of 1992 honorees. Given the reason why Disney erased my name from the honor roll, that action is perhaps best understood as the final honor of the American Teacher Awards.

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* In anticipation that this listing might change once again in response to this posting, Edwize took screen shots of the page listing the honorees as of this writing and of the Google cached page, which included my name prior to this episode. Here is the page as of my writing; my name was originally between that of Charles Bird and Sonja Cassady, and highlighted in light blue, as the winner in my category:

And here is the Google cache of the listing for all of the years before my name was eliminated:

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