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    It Won't Be Easy: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching
    It Won't Be Easy: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching
    It Won't Be Easy: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching
    Audiobook5 hours

    It Won't Be Easy: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching

    Written by Tom Rademacher and Dave Eggers

    Narrated by Roger Wayne

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Tom Rademacher wishes someone had handed him this sort of book along with his teaching degree: a clear-eyed, frank, boots-on-the ground account of what he was getting into. But first he had to write it. And as 2014's Minnesota Teacher of the Year, Rademacher knows what he's talking about. Less a how-to manual than a tribute to an impossible and impossibly rewarding profession, It Won't Be Easy captures the experience of teaching in all its messy glory.

    The book follows a year of teaching, with each chapter tackling a different aspect of the job. Pulling no punches (and resisting no punch lines), he writes about establishing yourself in a new building; teaching meaningful classes, keeping students a priority; investigating how race, gender, and identity affect your work; and why it's a good idea to keep an extra pair of pants at school. Along the way he answers the inevitable and the unanticipated questions, from what to do with Google to how to tell if you're really a terrible teacher, to why "Keep your head down" might well be the worst advice for a new teacher.

    Though directed at prospective and newer teachers, It Won't Be Easy is mercifully short on jargon and long on practical wisdom, accessible to anyone-teacher, student, parent, pundit-who is interested in a behind-the-curtain look at teaching and willing to understand that, while there are no simple answers, there is power in learning to ask the right questions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 10, 2018
    ISBN9781977375827
    It Won't Be Easy: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching

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    • 3/5
      This is a difficult review to write. The author, an award winning teacher, has penned an interesting book (part memoir, part instruction manual, part rant) about his thoughts and experiences in teaching. Part of me deeply admires Rademacher, for the obvious care he takes in his students. Part of me struggles with his constant demeaning of other teachers and the educational system as a whole. Part of me is very puzzled at his understanding of "white privilege" and "micro-aggressions", (perhaps because, the way I interpret his mindset, I will never be a good teacher because of the very fact that I am a white male myself). And part of me wants to sit down with him, over a beer, and discuss this all with him. There is a lot to make you think in this book. For example, he states "Education is important, the ability to think in complex ways, to understand the people and the world around you, the ability to find, filter, and synthesize information is important. School is not." And, "We are applying our own standards of success, or what sorts of jobs or lives are acceptable or desirable, to the kids we have instead of listening to what they really want". My question is: what kid, in his early teens, really "knows" what he wants? Isn't it our job to show them possibilities that they might not have imagined on their own, or to give them the direction they need to find those possibilities on their own? Not to just accept their statement, that at the age of 15, they want to be a world famous rap star, sports star, movie star? It leans towards enabling and "special snowflake" status. Just when I'm ready to give up on the author, he careens off in a different direction. With statements such as "My job, the thing I'm paid to do, is to try to make kids better at things". And "teaching makes you a better person". And I start to admire him again.Ultimately, the author gets stuck in a quagmire of his own making. Worried about his "white privilege", he ends up with his hands tied in dealing with an extremely disruptive student. He admits, "I don't know what to do for this kid. I don't want to get into battles, because I'm scared to win them and scared to lose them. When I don't confront her most destructive behavior, it only persists, it only expands. I think I could bend and twist and beg and shift and get her to do okay in my class, but I don't think it would help her do much better in whatever class comes next". He worries about the perceived micro-aggression of saying hello to a female, worried that he might be hurting her. Its great that he is so in touch with himself, but, as students pointed out to him on other occasions, "Oh, you're in your feelings". My question is, while he's fretting over this one student who has learned how to manipulate him, what about the other 20-30 students in the classroom? Don't they deserve to have a safe and stable learning environment? So, as you might be able to see from this review, I'm very torn on this book. Some great points and lessons, mixed in with some exasperatingly frustrating ideas and theories. I'll be interested in following further reviews to see how others see it. I received an advance reading copy of this book from NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.