This is a book that is obviously close to my heart. Although, I'm not sure how to rate it as a whole.

By far, my favorite part of the book was the introduction, where she describes the how ridiculous the 'preparation' Teach For America gives its teachers. She talked a lot about the crying--which I can say my first (second, and third) year of teaching were full of. I related to that, I liked to hear that someone else has experienced what I have experienced. The loneliness of moving somewhere where you know no one, and having to fight the daily battle of school.

Hers is a proactive book, "How this changed my life...for the better." F that. I want someone to write the truth of TFA, and what it does to its corps members. That is the book I wanted this to be.

I've been giving a lot of thought to this book, and there are a few things I feel that needed to be pointed out. Sarah is the standard TFA-er, I believe. Went to an Ivy League school (Yale), comes from a wealthy family (a family that sends her to Europe with her sister after her first year teaching, buys her plane tickets home the day after she cries to them on the phone, they "subsidize" her for a year so she can write this book), and she picked TFA because she thought it would look good on graduate school applications (she doesn't phrase it that way of course, but she did go to Harvard after TFA).

While this book is NOT the typical teacher book that talks about how all teachers need to do is CARE for their students for them to succeed (if that were the case, I would have a much more successful class)...after thinking about it, I feel something is missing from this book... ( )

This is a book that is obviously close to my heart. Although, I'm not sure how to rate it as a whole.

By far, my favorite part of the book was the introduction, where she describes the how ridiculous the 'preparation' Teach For America gives its teachers. She talked a lot about the crying--which I can say my first (second, and third) year of teaching were full of. I related to that, I liked to hear that someone else has experienced what I have experienced. The loneliness of moving somewhere where you know no one, and having to fight the daily battle of school.

Hers is a proactive book, "How this changed my life...for the better." F that. I want someone to write the truth of TFA, and what it does to its corps members. That is the book I wanted this to be.

I've been giving a lot of thought to this book, and there are a few things I feel that needed to be pointed out. Sarah is the standard TFA-er, I believe. Went to an Ivy League school (Yale), comes from a wealthy family (a family that sends her to Europe with her sister after her first year teaching, buys her plane tickets home the day after she cries to them on the phone, they "subsidize" her for a year so she can write this book), and she picked TFA because she thought it would look good on graduate school applications (she doesn't phrase it that way of course, but she did go to Harvard after TFA).

While this book is NOT the typical teacher book that talks about how all teachers need to do is CARE for their students for them to succeed (if that were the case, I would have a much more successful class)...after thinking about it, I feel something is missing from this book... ( )