Bob Peterson
Fifth grade teacher, La Escuela Fratney, Milwaukee Public Schools
editor, Rethinking Schools

Bob is an activist, teacher, writer, and organizer. His passion and hard work flow from his deep commitment to social justice that was sparked when as a pre-teen, Bob spent 18 months in Cairo, Egypt. He saw first-hand a world of deep inequality and injustice — a world far different from the protected, middle-class existence he had led in Madison, Wis. It left a lasting impression on his young mind.

During high school, Bob’s organizing centered around the War in Vietnam, world hunger, and student rights. He organized the Wisconsin High School Student Union, and was President of the Madison Youth Council, chairperson of the Madison Walk for Development, and a youth representative on the national board of the American Freedom From Hunger Foundation. As issues and movements proliferated in the 1960s and 1970s, Bob likewise expanded his focus. He was in leadership positions in a variety of efforts — from solidarity work for the Menominee Warriors Society in 1975 fighting for Native American rights, to building a multiracial organization of community activists to support Milwaukee’s public school desegregation movement in the late 1970s.

Some of Bob’s accomplishments are organizational, as evidenced by the institutions he has helped found. Some of his accomplishments are as a writer, as evidenced by the more than 8 books he has authored or edited (to say nothing of the more than 65 articles he has written for Rethinking Schools and the opinion pieces published in newspapers and magazines around the country.) And, of course, his main accomplishments are as a teacher — as evidenced by his many educational awards but, more importantly, the warm thanks he routinely receives from students, former students, and parents.

Some of Bob’s accomplishments include::
• In 1986, he co-founded Rethinking Schools. What began as a local alternative newspaper put together on his kitchen table has grown into an award-winning publication that is the country’s only national journal edited and published by practicing classroom teachers.
• In 1988 he co-founded La Escuela Fratney, Wisconsin’s first two-way bilingual school.
• In 1988 he co-founded the National Coalition of Education Activists, a multiracial grouping of teachers, parents, and community members.
• In 2000 he co-founded the Coalition for Responsible Assessment, a multiracial Milwaukee coalition of parents, community activists and educators who oppose excessive testing, but support quality accountability.

Bob received his B.S. in Elementary Education from University of Wisconson (UW)-Milwaukee, a M.A.in Curriculum and Instruction UW-Milwaukee, and a Doctorate (Ed.D) in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service, Cardinal Stritch University, Milwaukee, WI.