Book: Educating Esme

I came across this book while in the library, and I used my shiny new library card to "rent it" for a month.

It's by Esme Raji Codell, and it's a diary of a teacher's first year. If you haven't connected the dots yet, yes, it's autobiographical. Actually, considering the reputation of that genre lately (thanks, Frey), let's just assume it's autobiographical.

For the first half of the book I was a bit irritated. Mostly I was reading it to learn "how to write a first-person account of a daily activity", and secondly, because the subject matter appealed to me. But I was irritated because I couldn't imagine a first-year teacher behaving so flippant and patronizing to authority. How did she always have such a perfect, sarcastic retort to everything? And why did she want to? It's quite different from what you'd imagine a first-year-teacher memoir to be: First, she succeeds quite often. Second, she's not intimidated by anything. Or at least that's the tone she establishes right from the start.

But during the second half of the book, I started to really enjoy it. I accepted her dry wit as literary liberty, and felt inspired as she delved more into her newly realized philosophies of teaching. She began illustrating more meaningful interactions with her students, and wrote a bit more universally regarding the plight of the teacher.

However, at no time did I feel like she was a babe-in-the-woods in this new career. And it seems, through her telling, that the administration was frustrated by that as well.

So, I do think this was a good book. I am glad I read it. But I did have some reservations about the "literary personality" she built for herself. I would like to have seen her soften up a bit, sooner rather than later. But then again, maybe there are too many floundering first-year teachers writing memoirs. Maybe it's time we got a tougher one on the shelves. Enter Esme.

And finally, here is a quote from the book, which is actually something a more seasoned teacher said to her, not something she said herself. And, I have to tell you, it really moved me:

The difference between a beginning teacher and an experienced one is that the beginning teacher asks, "How am I doing?" and the experienced teacher asks, "How are the children doing?"