The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School
by Ed Boland
Non-fiction: Memoir
Setting: New York City, 2008
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (Feb. 9, 2016)
ISBN-10: 1455560618
Synopsis: Setting aside a successful career as a Yale admissions officer and nonprofit executive, the author decides to answer a mid-life call to teach. Rejecting short-term programs set-up to move degreed professionals quickly into the classroom, he spends two years in a master's program and, after student teaching and consulting veteran teachers, especially his sister, he begins his first assignment teaching ninth grade history in a lower Manhattan high school.
Despite assignment to an "autonomous" school, partially funded by the Gates Foundation and given freedom in curriculum and administration, Boland is soon overwhelmed. Exhaustion and discouragement lead him to resent his students, their circumstances, the education bureaucracy, and even his own inability to provide quality instruction in the midst of chaos. The author honestly depicts the trials and challenges of an urban classroom where there are no Hollywood school-year endings of miraculous test scores achieved and relationships built. Rather, Boland is left to contemplate his own failures as a teacher, the ineffectiveness of seemingly progressive reform efforts, and the circumstances stacked against the most needy students.
Appeal:
Highly Narrative
Detailed Look Inside a Classroom
Personalizes Urban Public Education
Read Alikes:
I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had - Tony Danza
Television actor recounts his year teaching in a Philadelphia high school.
Getting Schooled: The Re-education of an American Teacher - Garret Keizer
Teacher-turned-writer returns to the classroom after 14 years.
Letters to a Young Teacher - Jonathan Kozol
Former teacher and longtime education advocate Kozol shares advice and observations in letters to a new teacher.
The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education - Diane Ravitch
Former assistant secretary of education critiques policies she once supported but now views as detrimental to students.
Nice job with your annotation. It seems to capture the harsh challenges the author describes. Does the ending feel unresolved, or is it resolved but just very bleak?
ReplyDeleteBleak is a good description of the author's assessment of his personal attempts and the larger reform efforts undertaken at this school. I appreciated his honesty, even though it doesn't result in a 'feel good' ending.
ReplyDeleteWell, I have one ninth grader and I have raised two children that are now adults. So hats off to anyone who teaches our youth and especially high school. I feel like I am crazy most of the time. I could not even imagine teaching in lower Manhattan and then you add teens to that ratio. FORGET IT!! I respect teachers so much. I mean they teach a standard work day, then go home, do lesson plans, grade papers and somehow manage to fit the rest of their life in there somewhere. I really think that I would like this book. Thank you so much for sharing.
ReplyDeleteJennie
You're so right, Jennie. I spent a few years as a substitute teacher before working at the library. Yikes! Actually middle school, not high school, is what did me in!
ReplyDeleteI read Danza's book and was not thrilled by it. This seems to be a little more realistic for obvious reasons. And it tells the sad, true tale of our current public education system. The bureaucracy alone would be overwhelming. Great annotation!
ReplyDeleteA close friend of mine taught in a N.Y. school for over thirty years and related some of her frustration, which sounds similar to the author's experience. How sad for all concerned, particularly the students. It sounds like a great memoir, although I'm not sure I'm up to reading it.
ReplyDeleteExcellent annotation. Full points!
ReplyDelete