Bob Peterson has been a teacher and activist at Milwaukee Public Schools for more than 30 years.  Last year he was elected to the School Board and endorsed by the Shepherd Express as “probably the most qualified person to run for the Milwaukee School Board in more than a generation”  -- it noted that he started pushing for school reform as a high school student. Bob began his MPS career as a paraprofessional in 1977, then spent 30 years as an elementary teacher at several schools, including Escuela Fratney, Wisconsin’s first two-way bilingual school, which he co-founded. He was honored as Wisconsin’s Elementary Teacher of the Year in 1995. He has advocated for racial equity throughout his career, going back to the era of court-ordered desegregation in the  late 1970s when he was co-chair of People United for Integration and Quality Education. His dissertation at Cardinal Stritch University was on anti-prejudice, anti-racist teaching in a fifth grade classroom.  He was a founding editor of Rethinking Schools, which promotes equity and racial justice in the classroom and grew into an award-winning national publication and advocacy organization. He has co-edited several books, including one on rethinking how educators teach about Columbus. In 2011, after the passage of Act 10 that virtually stripped public unions of collective bargaining rights, Bob was elected president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, where he worked to “reimagine” the union and focus more on relationships and social justice issues and reclaiming the profession.