Katie Osgood teaches children in a psychiatric hospital in Chicago. She is one of our most eloquent bloggers, whose understanding of the damage done to children in today’s society is unparalleled.

This post of hers sums up the meaning of what I called the Twitter kerfuffle.

Last week, I wrote a post about “The Hero Teachers of Newtown,” which caused a VP of TFA to recoil in horror on Twitter. I was never clear  what he found so “reprehensible” or why he thought I should immediately retract the post. It seemed to be my having mentioned that the teachers were all members of a union and some had tenure. But I really don’t know what it was that offended him so, since I never mentioned TFA. The only thing I knew for sure was that I would never submit to a demand that I censor myself.

Then Karen Lewis jumped in, and her words were distorted even more than mine.

Katie explains it all in this post.

I strongly recommend that you read it.

Here is some advice from Ms. Katie:

“Stop hiding behind your misinformation, your spin, your talking points, your complaints about tone, your phony research.  Come to where the kids are.  Listen to parents beg, plead, cry, yell, and chant to save their schools from closure.  Come to my psych hospital and hear children’s actual experience of charter schools, of zero tolerance discipline, of school closures, of disinvestment in neighborhood schools, of poorly trained teachers in their classrooms.  Listen to parents and students who occupy their schools, hold sit-ins, orlet themselves be arrested to stop school closures and charter expansion.

“Sandy Hook reminded us all of the first thing we must remember about schools.  We must protect children above all else.  Like the Hippocratic Oath in medicine, we must “first do no harm” in our attempts to better education.  And corporate education reform IS HURTING CHILDREN.”

Reformers, don’t mess with Katie Osgood.

She teaches kids whose lives are desperate.

She is fearless.

You can’t touch her.

Don’t even try.