From a young age, I wanted to teach in the inner city. My dream was realized a few years ago, and I was given the privilege of teaching in inner city Dallas for three years.
At the end of last school year, I left the school. The reasons for my departure are a long, convoluted story and not relevant to this post. Suffice to say, I miss teaching those students every single day. Teaching in the inner city was the most fulfilling job I have ever held.
This book, "Hands Up!", showed up on my Pinterest in the last few months. I was (and am) in the throes of missing my old job and former students, so, on a whim, I went out to Amazon and ordered a copy. A week later, it was in my mailbox.
I am fitful when it comes to reading books. I love reading, but it takes time and energy, neither of which I possess in excess during the school year. I have a pile of about 18 books that I am currently in the middle of reading. I try to read a little every night; it happens once every few nights, and rarely do I pick up the same book twice in a row.
It was different with this book. Perhaps it was because of the subject matter and the pangs of separation I was feeling in regards to my former students, but I found myself picking up this book several times a week. Sometimes, I was picking it up not only right before bedtime, but on an afternoon on the weekend.
The setting is inner city London. I did not realize that when I ordered it, so when I first realized this, after reading the cover, I thought perhaps the experience would be very different from mine. I was wrong. I could relate to almost everything. Yes, the education diction was different than our American terms (i.e. "year 10's" instead of "juniors" or "11th grade"), but the experiences? They were almost identical.
I laughed my way through this book because I could relate. Other times, I read with a lump in my throat because it made me think of THAT student or THAT experience. The author, a teacher with "Teach First!", the British version of our "Teach for America," gives a detailed account of her school year, semester by semester (called "terms" in England). The exhaustion, the feeling of being at your wits end, the lack of resources - it's all there. Most of all, the portraits of the students she taught - they are all familiar. The hard-working student, despite all odds. The disinterested student - because they don't see how this applies to real life. The disruptive student - because for them, school is simply a social event. All these students are present.
If you are a teacher, especially a teacher with any experience in the inner city or a title one school, I recommend this book. If you are a human with a heart to reach out to children of the inner city, I recommend this book to you, too. You will laugh and you will cry. More than that, you will recognize the children in it's pages, and it will strengthen you to tackle anew the task or dream you have at hand.
