Teacherland: Inside the Myth of the American Educator

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Description

In the popular narrative teachers are cast as saints or slouches, heroes or zeros. They either forgo their material well-being for the reward of a higher calling, or they show movies, have too much time off, and are impossible to fire. Teacherland fills the gap between these two clichs with insight, humor, and conviction. How do you manage a room of energetic adolescents and ensure everyone is learning What happens when some students begin with a distinct disadvantage while others have every opportunity How do colleagues and friends help counteract the professions inherent isolation What happens when you make embarrassing comments in class, or cant use the bathroom when desired How do you deal with Back to School Night and Open House, staff meetings and rallies and dances These are but a few of the questions Teacherland considers, with the ultimate goal of improving our education system by humanizing the teaching profession. It aims to reframe the debate about what it means to teach and learn and to showfor realwhat life is like behind the curtains of one of Americas most important occupations.

Reviews

Teacherlanddelivers an up-close-and-personal account of the lives of teachers. If you want to go beyond the saints-or-sinners accounts of public education and understand what schools are really like, this book deserves to be at the very top of your reading list. -- David Kirp, author of Improbable Scholars, Berkeley professor and New York Times contributing writer
Aaron Pribble'sTeacherlandadds an important and poignant look at teaching through a practitioner's perspective. Told largely as a series of evocative and thought-provoking vignettes, the book challenges much of the overheated and simplistic political rhetoric surrounding education, offering readers a vastly more nuanced, creative, and memorable look at this vitally important profession. -- Sarah Carr, journalist and author of Hope Against Hope
If I were still training teachers, this would be my number one required text. It is insightful, very practical, and delightfully writtenamong the most creative books for teachers Ive ever read. No book can produce a good teacher. But if one could, this would be it! -- Mark Phillips, Professor Emeritus, San Francisco State University, Educational writer for Edutopia and the Marin Independent Journal
Not sinceUp the Down Staircasehas there been a book about teaching that is as incisive, funny and interesting asTeacherland, written by a long-time teacher whose credentials include a best-selling book about baseball. This one gets an A plus. -- Russell Hill, author of Tom Hall & the Captain of All These Men of Death
Everybody seems to have a voice about education except educators themselves, who are often painted by pundits and policy makers in broadstereotypesthe "bad teacher" or the superhero.With humor, honesty, and humility, Pribble provides theantidote: a work of witness by a real, human teacher reflecting on the craft and the meaning of an authentic education. -- Adam Bessie, Professor of English, Diablo Valley College and Graphic Storyteller

Author Bio

Aaron Pribble is the author of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League (2011). An award-winning educator whose work includes Pribble is a Chiller: Student Input and Teacher Evaluations, Dreaming of Baseball in Havana, and Fastball in the Desert among other publications, Aaron teaches social studies at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California.