Summer reading

It's not quite summer yet, but you can keep it on the shelf for a few more weeks...
I've got a copy of Relentless Pursuit, a Year in the Trenches with Teach for America, by Donna Foote -- and I'd be happy to send it to whoever wants it. (Or whomever??) It's fabulous. I know there are a lot of these in-the-trenches books, but this is better than most.

Donna Foote is a former Newsweek reporter who spend a year in a poor South Los Angeles high school, spending lots of time in the classrooms of four new TFA teachers. As you can imagine, this is not an easy assignment for them.

My favorite line: "He did it. Dante urinated in a water bucket right in the middle of Miss Snyder's class."

You have to admire these young teachers. They have a great sense of mission, if not much self-preservation... But you also have to wonder about a system that takes chronically under-prepared educators and ships them to the most challenging schools in the country to serve our neediest students, hoping that their enthusiasm and intelligence will be enough to carry the day.

As you'll see, sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't.