Product Description

There aren't too many teachers who are written about in the New Yorker, People, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, and excerpted in Reader's Digest. But Esme Raji Codell is no ordinary teacher. An irrepressible spirit, she wears costumes in the classroom, dances with the kids during math lessons, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. In Educating Esme, the uncensored diary of her first year teaching in a Chicago public school, she opens a window into the closed world of a real-life classroom. Refusing to let anything get in the way of delivering the education her fifth-graders deserve, this dedicated teacher finds herself battling bureaucrats, gang members, inflexible administrators, angry children, and her own insecurities, while at the same time changing her students' lives forever. Now in paperback, here is the book People called "hilarious," Booklist called "screamingly funny," Greensboro News Record called "brilliantly conceived," and the Boston Phoenix noted "should be read by anyone who's interested in the future of public education."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210118 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

From Amazon.com
Esmé Raji Codell has written a funny, hip diary filled with one-liners and unadorned thoughts that speak volumes about the raw, emotional life of a first-year teacher. Like Ally McBeal in the classroom, the miniskirted and idealistic Codell sometimes fantasizes her career is a musical. Her inner-city Chicago elementary school fades to black as the lunch lady strikes an arabesque or a struggling student performs the dance of the dying swan, all set to her interior soundtrack. (Tina Turner's "Funkier Than a Mosquita's Tweeter" echoes whenever her idea-stealing, dimwitted principal harangues her.) She's a rash, petite, white lady who roller-skates through the halls and insists that her fifth-graders call her "Madame Esmé." But it's not all fun and games: she introduces us to children who fling their desks and apologize in tears, and at one point, after reporting a disruptive student to her mother, who subsequently thrashes the young girl, she dry heaves into her classroom's trash can.

Codell's 24-year-old voice is loud and clear ("Serious gross out," she writes after the scorned principal hugs her), though, on the principle that kids say the darnedest things, she often simply repeats their comments for comic effect. She's got sass, maybe too much self-confidence at times, and though there's no deep introspection in Educating Esmé, you'll be convinced her 10-year-old charges emerge the better for knowing her. --Jodi Mailander Farrell

From 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 thatAas a 24-year-old hardcore idealistAshe brought to her difficult job. Hired for a brand-new school, she tells how she let her "na?vet?" 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.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From 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
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Educating Esme
I read this book by the recommendation of my boyfriend and then it was used in two college courses for elementary education. It is fantastic!! I want to teach on the south side of Chicago and this book was an amazing insight into what one may or may not expect during their first year. Esme is amazing and talented and I already know that I will walk into my first classroom with a great deal of knowledge and a massive amount of ideas just from reading this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone heading into the teaching field or anyone how wants to read something enjoyable!

Educating Esme is perfect
Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year is one of the best books I have ever read. When I came to the end, I cried because it was over. Esme Codell is a defiant, tell-it-like-it-is, awe-inspiring, creative and brilliant first year teacher in an inner-city classroom of Chicago and gives her first-hand account of the ups and downs of her fifth grade class. The book is heartwarming and heartbreaking, laugh out loud funny and bring tears to your eyes sad, and above all else - inspiring. From someone who is currently applying for her first teaching position, I loved every word Esme put into her diary. I highly recommend this book to anyone!

Good, but not GREAT!
Educating Esmé by Esmé Raji Codell is a diary of the author's trials and tribulations during her first year teaching. She learns that sometimes everyone doesn't like "her" way of doing things in this inner city Chicago school. She never gives up though, due to her extraordinary will to succeed. Madame Esmé, as she likes to be called, talks as though she is the only teacher in the school. She writes about being the only one in her school that really cares about the students, and she is the lone one who tries to connect with them.
This book was good, but not great. I wouldn't read it again, and I would only recommend it to someone going into teaching. I believe that I wasn't too interested in it merely because I'm not into teaching. This book is full of details, but none seem to go anywhere. Nothing eventful happens in this book that makes readers want to keep going to find out what happens next; every event is predictable. Overall, I enjoyed the reading experience, but would not read this book again.