Educating Esmé

Esmé Raji Codell · first published 1999 · ISBN 9780606287739

Codell's first year teaching in a Chicago public school is told through diary entries and reflections. She's inventive and energetic, creating quirky lessons and fighting bureaucratic indifference, but she's also overwhelmed, doubting her sanity, and learning that enthusiasm alone doesn't manage a classroom. The book captures the emotional roller coaster of a novice teacher: moments of connection, stretches of exhaustion, the sting of criticism from colleagues, the weight of standardized testing, the joy of breakthrough.