Category Archives: Book Excerpts
Book Excerpt: If you’re worried that the kids are smarter than you, they probably are (and you should quit and work at Jamba Juice)
by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY & JESSE SCACCIA Here’s the thing. The kids are smarter than you. They are brilliant, funny, creative, and perceptive. They will blow you away if you open yourself to it. I cannot say this enough: If you’re … Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: The purpose-driven passing period
by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY & JESSE SCACCIA Some problems are just not meant to be dealt with in class. They are too delicate, too comprehensive, too charged, or too minor to be solved in a public forum. They require a more … Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: Over the river and through the woods to graduation we go
by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY & JESSE SCACCIA It’s no accident that we refer to it as the public school system. It’s exactly that: a system. And not a particularly kind or sensible one either. At some point during your first year, … Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: Smile like you just got zerberted by Bill Cosby
By JESSE SCACCIA & ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY Maybe the absolute worst advice an older teacher ever gave me was to not smile the entire fall term of my first year. “You’re young,” she rasped, her menthol-coated lungs straining to push the … Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: Pass the mic
Tips on how to deal with the class clown. Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: You are what you teach
When students say they hate a certain subject, more often than not, that is teenage code for hating the teacher. We are not just vessels for our subjects; to the kids, we are the subjects, personified. Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: That’s custodial technician to you, big guy
Janitors are at the bottom of the school hierarchy. They break their backs day after day cleaning up after ungrateful students, dutifully following in the wake of self-absorbed a-holes who shamelessly leave their crap everywhere. And sometimes amongst all the crap students leave behind is—gross, I know—literally crap.
So that’s one reason to be nice to your school’s maintenance staff.
The other reason is you need them.
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Book Excerpt: This ain’t Hollywood
Resist the urge to imagine yourself as some altruistic superteacher come to save the lives of hardened inner-city kids. They don’t want to be saved by you, alright? Or at least not in the way that you’re imagining, or that Hollywood seems to insist upon. Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: Don’t freak out
Imagine living the entirety of your life on red alert in the claustrophobic corridors of a submarine. Imagine a hurricane that won’t go away, that moves imperceptibly closer each day but never actually hits. Imagine being down on points in the last round, your corner man is yelling at you from the sidelines to keep throwing haymakers, and when you look up at the clock it is counting down from infinity.
No one can be expected to live in these conditions. It is just not possible to sustain fourth quarter urgency over a prolonged period. We would all have stomach ulcers and really bad acne.
But that is precisely what teachers are asked to do. Continue reading
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Book Excerpt: Quit and go to law school
Listen. The teaching profession is more than happy to have you. You’re smart. You’re hardworking. You dress up for parent/teacher night. Plus, you got a really high score on the LSAT.
Wait a minute. The LSAT has nothing to do with teaching. What are you trying pull here, mister? You getting out already? Too hot for you, is it?
All right, you don’t have to tell me. Lawyers get paid more, laid more, and they will never be informed by a tenth grader that their breath smells like an everything bagel with lox.
I can’t tell you how many lawyers I’ve met over the last few years who used to be teachers. They talk wistfully of their two or three years in the classroom, mumble some sincere but generic nonsense about how rewarding it was, and emphasize over and over how much respect they have for teachers. Some even say that they miss it. Continue reading
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