Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year [SIGNED COPY]

Codell, Esme Raji

ISBN 10: 1565122259 / ISBN 13: 9781565122253

Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 1999

About this Item

Very good in very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 210 p. Audience: General/trade. SIGNED and inscribed 'All best wishes for happy reading to Natalie and Joe. Thank you for all the lovely stories you gave to my mother by sharing your wonderful children, Madam Esme' with a sketch of a shooting star by author on half-title page. 1st edition, 2nd printing. Dust jacket has slight edgewear and soiling. Mild shelfwear to boards and minor bumping to cap and base of spine. A memoir of a teacher's first year in an inner-city school, the basis of a prize-winning NPR feature. By the author of 'Diary of a Fairy Godmother' and 'How to Get Your Child to Love Reading'. Rare signed. Where possible, all books come with dust jacket in a protective mylar sleeve, sealed in a ziplock bag, wrapped in bubble wrap, shipped in a box. Seller Inventory # Alibris.0006894

Bibliographic Details

Title: Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First ...

Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Publication Date: 1999

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

A must-read for parents, new teachers, and classroom veterans, Educating Esmé is the exuberant diary of Esmé Raji Codell’s first year teaching in a Chicago public school. Fresh-mouthed and free-spirited, the irrepressible Madame Esmé―as she prefers to be called―does the cha-cha during multiplication tables, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. Her diary opens a window into a real-life classroom from a teacher’s perspective. While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted young woman reveals what it takes to be an exceptional teacher. 

Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esmé now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running. As relevant and iconoclastic as when it was first published, Educating Esmé is a classic, as is Madame Esmé herself.

Review:

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