It won't be easy
Subtitle: an exceedingly honest (and slightly unprofessional) love letter to teaching
By: Tom Rademacher ; foreword by Dave Eggers
Contributors: Eggers, Dave, writer of foreword
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press; Univ Of Minnesota Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
ISBN-13: 9781517901127
Subjects: Teaching; First year teachers; Biography; Teachers
Description: Tom Rademacher wishes someone had handed him this sort of book along with his teaching degree: a clear-eyed, frank, boots-on-the ground account of what he was getting into. But first he had to write it. And as 2014's Minnesota Teacher of the Year, Rademacher knows what he's talking about. Less a how-to manual than a tribute to an impossible and impossibly rewarding profession, It Won't Be Easy captures the experience of teaching in all its messy glory. The book follows a year of teaching, with each chapter tackling a different aspect of the job. Pulling no punches (and resisting no punch lines), he writes about establishing yourself in a new building; teaching meaningful classes, keeping students a priority; investigating how race, gender, and identity affect your work; and why it's a good idea to keep an extra pair of pants at school. Along the way he answers the inevitable and the unanticipated questions, from what to do with Google to how to tell if you're really a terrible teacher, to why "Keep your head down" might well be the worst advice for a new teacher.Though directed at prospective and newer teachers, It Won't Be Easy is mercifully short on jargon and long on practical wisdom, accessible to anyone--teacher, student, parent, pundit--who is interested in a behind-the-curtain look at teaching and willing to understand that, while there are no simple answers, there is power in learning to ask the right questions.  -- Provided by publisher.
Notes: Foreword copyrighted 2015.
Table of contents: title: Foreword: Dave Eggers; title: Introduction: The Rules; title: Part I. Summer; title: Welcome to the Shit show; title: The Interview; title: Getting Along with Grown-ups; title: Crappy Job, Great Career; title: Part II. Fear, anger, and Controlling a Classroom; title: So, You Think You're a Terrible Teacher; title: Part III. Winter; title: The Goddamn Internet; title: The Worst Advice Ever; title: White-Guy Bullshit; title: When Kids Work for Change; title: Part IV. Spring; title: Give Your Room to the Kids; title: Liberal Racism, Racist Racism, and the Middle Road; title: When Bad Things Happen; title: I Quit; title: Part V. Summer, Again; title: Let Me Tell You About These Kids