Urban Activist To Speak

Patrick Finn Patrick Finn, school teacher, education expert, and urban activist, will deliver the Robert F. & Augusta Finkelstein Memorial Lecture, "A New Paradigm for Education Working-Class Students," on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. in the Ruth S. Harley University Center Ballroom, 1 South Avenue, Garden City. The event is free and open to the public.

Though Patrick Finn came from a family of plumbers on the south side of Chicago, he became a school teacher instead. He taught middle school in Chicago for six years, worked at Scott Foresman as an editor of reading and literature books, and taught English at the Chicago Community College.

In addition to a number of articles and book chapters, he has published three college texts on teaching reading and language arts. In 1999, he published Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working Class Children in Their Own Self-interest, which has sold more than 35,000 copies, and sales remain strong. He is co-editor with his wife, Mary Finn, of Teacher Education with an Attitude which was published in 2006. SUNY Press will publish the 10th Anniversary Revised Edition of Literacy with an Attitude early in 2009.

Dr. Finn, who received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago, is also an urban activist. He co-chaired the SUNY/Buffalo Coalition for Urban Education, co-created and facilitated Parent Empowerment Workshops at Buffalo Public School 4, facilitated Alternatives to Violence Project workshops, and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Community Action Information Center (a Buffalo inner-city community organization). He has served as team leader for the education task force, VOICE Buffalo (A Gamaliel Foundation Affiliate). Dr. Finn is a facilitator for the Alternatives to Violence Project (Prison and Community Conflict Resolution Workshops). He has also served on the Board of Trustees, and as clerk for the Peace and Social Justice Committee of his Quaker meeting in Buffalo.

For more information about this and other events on campus, visit http://events.adelphi.edu/ or call the Cultural Events Hotline at (516) 877-4555.