Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite

Albert Mazza worked for the New York City public school system from 1963 until 1995. He worked under six chancellors and a changing Board of Education from 1979 until 1990. In "A Teacher Grows in Brooklyn", the author tells of how, in 1977, he was transferred from teaching at New Dorp high school on Staten Island to an office at the Central Board of Education. There, Albert Mazza was given the task of implementing a two-week hosting schedule for a delegation of students from Tel Aviv in Israel. And Mazza's new career began. As he writes on page 24, "I served as director of the program under all chancellors for the period of 1980 to 1990. I was a one-man office for the first five years...In 1986, the Board of Education provided a formal budget...All activities involving foreign operations and visitors were now referred to me. I became the system's "poster boy" for international education projects..." Under Mazza's careful supervision, exchange trips between students from the New York City school system and their counterparts in Israel and then in Japan, China, Russia, Africa, Spain and different other countries of the world. As the author writes on page 51, "More important than the program and the execution of the schedule were the reactions of the students. Our observations of them could be described as life changing.

"A Teacher Grows in Brooklyn" by Albert Mazza gives the reader a picture of an earlier time and place in the history of public school education in the United States. Students were chosen to travel to other countries, learn and observe. The author tells of just how to operate such a program successfully. But as Albert Mazza openly admits, severe budget restraints and social problems ended his very successful Young Diplomats Program. But "A Teacher Grows in Brooklyn" is an excellent portrait of a very special time in our not so distant past. The reader will enjoy Mazza's recounting of a time gone by and will wish for its return.