New York Times reporter and author Abby Goodnough will discuss "Reality vs. Rhetoric: Inside America's Public School System" in a lecture Dec. 1 at 4 p.m. in the Hendrix Education Auditorium on the UNLV campus.

Goodnough will address the realities of teaching in the public school system as portrayed in her book, "Ms. Moffett's First Year." The book, which is based on an award-winning series in the New York Times, sparked national discussion about the gulf between the rhetoric of education reform and the practice of teaching in public schools.

The book tells the story of Donna Moffett, a legal secretary who answered an ad for the New York City Teaching Fellows program, which sought to recruit "talented professionals" from other fields to teach in some of the city's worst schools. Seven weeks later she was a first grade teacher in a classroom in Flatbush, Brooklyn, nearly completely unprepared for what she was about to face.

Goodnough followed Donna Moffett through her first year as a teacher, writing a front-page, award-winning series that she later expanded into a book. Goodnough spent the last four of her eight years at The New York Times on the metropolitan desk covering New York City schools. In 2003 she was named Miami Bureau Chief.

The lecture, cosponsored by the New York Times and UNLV, is part of a larger partnership between the two organizations that seeks to help education professors teach prospective teachers how to better utilize newspapers in the classroom. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested. To register, email your name to poltoj@nytimes.com .

For more information, call the UNLV College of Education at 895-3375.