Educating Esme- A book Review

Educating Esme-Diary of A Teacher’s First Year by Esme Raji Codell

I was very privileged to be  invited to be on Esme’s Blog Tour which starts in September.I received a copy of her book last month and it was a really refreshing read. It is very seldom that I pick up a book relating to being a teacher and can get through reading it at one siting.

Educating Esme is an open diary about Esme’s encounter in the classroom as a Beginning teacher. It brought back memories of myself being a Beginning teacher nearly 10 years ago. The experiences and challenges I experienced were not that similar but I could strongly relate to the strong oppression by the management a.k.a Head Chief .

I loved reading about her quirky responses and how she challenges authority.  In one of the entries that she wrote in her Diary it mentioned that her class was busy doing group work on the floor. The principal came in and announced to her that she was doing a bad job of classroom management as it look like chaos. She answered that “No” and that her class was perfectly under control and put up her hand to call the kids to attend. Almost immediately all the pupils stood up and put up their hands too and the classroom fell to an eerie silence.

Esme  bares it all and tells how teaching is  it through her eye. Her diary if filled with her genuine feelings how how she handles all the different challenges hurled  at her during classroom teaching.  She strives very hard to make educating and learning a fun and meaningful experience for all the students in her class. Her rich knowledge of literature  can be seen the class library, classroom decoration and school activities which is vividly  described in her book.

She has lots of practical and interesting tips which I can adapt into my own classroom to enrich the learning experience of my kids.

I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of Educating Esme I really enjoyed reading it and I am sure that you will too 🙂

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