Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year | 
| Author: Esme Raji Codell
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Category: Book
List Price: $10.95
Buy Used: $1.60
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Avg. Customer Rating:  139 reviews
Sales Rank: 18138
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 216
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1565122798
Dewey Decimal Number: 372.110092
UPC: 019628722799
EAN: 9781565122796
Publication Date: June 1, 2001
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Amazon.com Review
Esme 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 black 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 Esme." 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 Esme, you'll be convinced her 10-year-old charges emerge the better for knowing her. --Jodi Mailander Farrell
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 Esme 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 ESME, the uncensored diary of her 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."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 134 more reviews...
Required Reading! October 15, 2008
This book wasn't what I expected from the title -- it was more about Esme educating the school and administrators than about her getting "broken in." All the same, I loved her creativity and enthusiasm, and the way she shared her shortcomings as well as her successes made the book even more inspiring.
The book was short, concise, easy to read, and fun. It should be required reading for all teachers and parents. Esme Codell is the teacher you wish your kids would have.
 Educating Esme September 15, 2008
Excellent Book! I read it all in one sitting. I enjoyed it so much I bought a copy for my sister. Good advice and it will have you laughing aloud.
A Must Read for Every New Teacher July 2, 2008
"Educating Esme" is a great book for any new or perspective teacher. She uses humor to demonstrate the struggles of a 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!
 Pity a School That Needs a Star June 1, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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?
Wonderful Read February 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 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!
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