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Bibliothèque | Type de document | Numéro de cote topographique | Nombre d'enregistrements enfants | Emplacement | Statut | Réservations du document |
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Recherche en cours... Branch | Book on Tape | BT 371.102 CODELL | 1 | Audio-visual Collection | Recherche en cours... Inconnu | Recherche en cours... Indisponible |
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Résumé
Résumé
Esme Raji Codell has come to teach, and she's not going to let incompetent administrators, abusive parents, gang members, or her own insecurities get in the way. As she puts it, she has "Thirty-one children. Thirty-one chances. Thirty-one futures, our futures. Everything they become, I also become." Codell's portrait of an inner-city elementary school is funny, poignant, and inspiring. Her struggle to maintain individuality in the face of bureaucracy and her defiant stand against mediocrity will reverberate in companies as well as classrooms everywhere."
Critiques (4)
Critique du Publishers Weekly
Portions of Codell's diary of her experiences as a first-year teacher in a Chicago inner-city elementary school were first aired on WBEZ radio, in that city, as part of its Life Stories series. Subsequently rounded out into a book, the material still comes across like it's meant to be read aloud. Codell's voice carries the enthusiasm thatÄas a 24-year-old hardcore idealistÄshe brought to her difficult job. Hired for a brand-new school, she tells how she let her "navet" work to her own advantage. She invented ways to engage her troubled, sometimes hostile students, relying on jerry-rigged visual aids, group craft projects, role-reversing skits and the like. Villains appear as well, such as her evil principal, Mr. Turner, a "homophobic, backward idiot." Codell throws herself into the reading, imitating her kids' voices, sounding truly exasperated at each obstacle she faces. Based on the 1999 Algonquin hardcover. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Critique de Booklist
Esme's miracle is that she didn't lose faith in herself or her fifth-grade students during her first year of teaching in Chicago, battling all the ills of urban poverty and a principal who was soul mate to Dilbert's boss. What delights in this modern, true-life version of Up the Down Staircase is Esme's energy: she read to her students and had them act things out; she taught them conflict resolution and was astounded when it worked; she had one obstreperous student play teacher for a day--while she played him. Her fierce enthusiasm overflows the page. She decries rules that want to make all children alike all the time. And when she goes back three years later to the graduation of half of those former fifth-graders, she wonders what has happened to the other half. This revealing, screamingly funny memoir offers hope and fear in equal measure to those who would teach and those who want to know about teaching. (Reviewed March 15, 1999)1565122259GraceAnne A. DeCandido
Critique de School Library Journal
YA-With the freshness, brashness, and know-it-all zeal of a first-time teacher, Madame Esm, as she asked her students to call her, jumped in with both feet for a remarkable year with her fifth-grade class. Her journal is at times bubbling with enthusiasm or bristling with anger. Codell is by turns tough and gentle. She witnessed two of her students being beaten by their parents after she discussed their classroom behavior. She feared that one student might shoot her. These youngsters' lives were incredibly grim, yet they read and wrote, sometimes advancing as much as two grade levels. Their teacher's success did not go unnoticed: she won the Dr. Peggy Williams Award, given by the Chicago Area Reading Association for outstanding teacher in the field of language arts. Readers are privy to the author's outbursts of anger toward the children and her moments of pride, but the intimacy of a diarist's self-examination/self-revelation is absent and the writing has a self-conscious tone. Madame Esm sometimes seems a little too cold-blooded or a little too keen on her own brilliance, but then there are moments when her generosity and love and empathy toward her students shine and make up for the arrogance. In the end, readers find a teacher who cares.-Theo Heras, Toronto Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Critique de Kirkus
A spirited account of a gifted teacher's first year in an inner-city fifth-grade classroom. Codell seems to be that exceptional teacher who tirelessly devises new ways of engaging with her 31 students'she's determined to educate them and enrich their lives. At 24, Codell shows the bravado of youth, along with the savoir-faire of a far more experienced teacher. Hired after a perfunctory interview with a sexist, parochial, ineffectual principal of a Chicago elementary school, she has to throw too much of her energy into defending her modus operandi, which should evoke praise, not criticism. Particularly perturbing to her principal is her insistence that her students address her as Ms. Esmé. ``It's against board policy,'' he constantly reminds her, with threats to cite her for insubordination. Able to ignore most of the bureaucratic pettiness that permeates the daily doings, Esmé organizes a schoolwide Fairy Tale Festival (replete with a Fairy Tale Fashion Show, carnival games, and bake sale); sets up a classroom library with sets of books that she herself purchases; publishes a lively class newsletter; and gains the respect of just about all the students and their parents. There seem to be no boundaries to Codell's innovative measures. To teach her students how to multiply double digits, she puts on ``Mu-Cha-Cha'' from Bells Are Ringing and dances along with her class, making her feet do the math. When a particularly obstreperous child makes her days exceedingly difficult, she changes places with him, inviting him to play the teacher and herself to play the confrontational student. (He never again presents a problem.) When a student is endangered by domestic violence, Madame Esmé opens her home to him and his sister for the night, without, of course, notifying the administration. Educating Esmé is that exceptional education book about an even more exceptional teacher. It deserves to be read by anyone who cares about children. (Author tour)