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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 372.110092
EAN num: 9781565122796
ISBN number: 1565122798
Label: Algonquin Books
Manufacturer: Algonquin Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 216
Printing Date: June 01, 2001
Publishing house: Algonquin Books
Sale Popularity Level: 7698
Studio: Algonquin Books
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Product Description:
There aren't too many teachers who are written about in the New Yorker, People, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, and excerpted in Reader's Digest. But Esmé Raji Codell is no ordinary teacher. An irrepressible spirit, she wears costumes in the classroom, dances with the kids during math lessons, rollerskates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library.
In Educating Esmé, the uncensored diary of her very first year teaching in a Chicago public school, she opens a window into the closed world of a real-life classroom. Refusing to let anything get in the way of delivering the education her fifth-graders deserve, this dedicated teacher finds herself battling bureaucrats, gang members, inflexible administrators, angry children, and her own insecurities, while at the same time changing her students' lives forever.
Now in paperback, here is the book People called 'hilarious,' Booklist called 'screamingly funny,' Greensboro News & Record called 'brilliantly conceived,' and the Boston Phoenix noted 'should be read by anyone who's interested in the future of public education.'
Amazon.com:
Esmé Raji Codell has written a funny, hip diary filled with one-liners and unadorned thoughts that speak volumes about the raw, emotional life of a first-year teacher. Like Ally McBeal in the classroom, the miniskirted and idealistic Codell sometimes fantasizes her career is a musical. Her inner-city Chicago elementary school fades to grey as the lunch lady strikes an arabesque or a struggling student performs the dance of the dying swan, all set to her interior soundtrack. (Tina Turner's 'Funkier Than a Mosquita's Tweeter' echoes whenever her idea-stealing, dimwitted principal harangues her.) She's a rash, petite, white lady who roller-skates through the halls and insists that her fifth-graders call her 'Madame Esmé.' But it's not all fun and games: she introduces us to children who fling their desks and apologize in tears, and at one point, after reporting a disruptive student to her mother, who subsequently thrashes the young girl, she dry heaves into her classroom's trash can.
Codell's 24-year-old voice is loud and clear ('Serious gross out,' she writes after the scorned principal hugs her), though, on the principle that kids say the darnedest things, she often simply repeats their comments for comic effect. She's got sass, maybe too much self-confidence at times, and though there's no deep introspection in Educating Esmé, you'll be convinced her 10-year-old charges emerge the better for knowing her. --Jodi Mailander Farrell
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Rated by buyers 
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"Educating Esme" is a great book for any new or perspective teacher. She uses humour to demonstrate the struggles of a very first year teacher, and yet the book isn't entirely about those struggles. It also includes some cute anecdotes about the little things that make you want to be a teacher and some great classroom ideas! This book is a great read if you want to be inspired as a teacher!
Rated by buyers 
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Things have fallen to a very low level indeed when the best an institution has going for it is a single star. Think of a ballet company, a baseball team, or even a corporation. What would it be like if only of person in the group was doing a good job? This is the premise of Esme's memoir. "Look at me! I'm edumacating 'em!" Mind you, this has been a trend in American education now for some thirty years. These earnest Antioch College types with zebra leotards and high-top tennis shoes want to dance on their desks. It's the Robin Williams to-the-rescue syndrome. Meanwhile the schools fall apart: there is no discipline, no curriculum, no learning. Ms Esme's is a name-caller, whose deepest insight is that her principal is "homophobic." Of course. But she'll straighten them all out with her philosophy of inclusion and her love of diversity. The career teachers are dismissed by these walk-through reformers as standing in the way of change, with the result that most inner-schools are revolving doors of "burned-out" do-gooders who take Fridays off to recharge their batteries. After two years they hit the road and tell everyone they miss the kids. How long can a society survive such an assault?
Rated by buyers -
This book is a great book for anyone looking at the teaching profession. I used it in an education introduction class and it is very insightful as well as just a great read. This is a real life personal experience in the very first year of teaching for Esme, and shows the good and the bad of teaching as well as effective and ineffective teaching strategies. Great for education, thought, or just enjoyment!
Rated by buyers -
Everthing that Esme says really hits me hard because I'm a student in the typical public school. I really wish I had a teacher like this, who could make boring subjects interesting, instead of reading everything straight out of the text book.
I didn't think she was too self-absorbed, as many reviewers have said, I think her need for approval is very appropriate. I mean, I would just scream having to be in the unhealthy enviroment Esme is in. She handled everything with confidence and was always there for her "children."
This is a great read for anyone who has ever stepped foot in a public school. All of her stories are either entertaining or shocking, and definitely worth reading twice.
Rated by buyers -
In our day and age, years equal experience. Well, not in this story! As an educator, I, like Esme, can see the profound lack of capability in American schools. Teachers are expected to follow guidelines and do what the principal suggests with no argument (apparently that is a guarantee of keeping one's job these days). Esme questions the status quo and challenges each of us to do the same. Many of the decisions that are made regarding schools are done by politicians who have never set foot in classroom. I've read some of the other reviews. I think the people who didn't like the book thought so because they are the types of people that Esme bulldozed in the story; those lousy teachers who run any idea into the ground because it wasn't their own-- who have sat all day in front of a class for 20 some years and have yet to come up with an individual thought. She deserves self-promotion. Clearly she's not too bad-- she got asked back for a 2nd year at the same school and won an amazing literary award. I think I would share my excitement with my diary.
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