Sam Chaltain, a former teacher, is the former National Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy -- a DC-based education advocacy organization devoted to restoring the public purpose of public education. He is also the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 principals create more democratic learning communities.  The Forum for Education and Democracy started the Faces of Learning campaign (facesoflearning.net) in September of 2009 to engage the public in a thoughtful consideration of what powerful learning, highly-effective teaching, and a school system committed to fairness actually looks like.  Rethink Learning Now has collected the personal learning stories that make up this book, and plans to use them as the basis of a discussion and recommendations on improving education.