Teacherland: Inside the Myth of the American Educator

In the popular narrative teachers are cast as saints or slouches, heroes or zeros. They either forgo their material well-being for the reward of a higher calling, or they show movies, have too much time off, and are impossible to fire. Teacherland fills the gap between these two clichés with insight, humor, and conviction. How do you manage a room of energetic adolescents and ensure everyone is learning? What happens when some students begin with a distinct disadvantage while others have every opportunity? How do colleagues and friends help counteract the profession’s inherent isolation? What happens when you make embarrassing comments in class, or can’t use the bathroom when desired? How do you deal with Back to School Night and Open House, staff meetings and rallies and dances? These are but a few of the questions Teacherland considers, with the ultimate goal of improving our education system by humanizing the teaching profession. It aims to reframe the debate about what it means to teach and learn and to show—for real—what life is like behind the curtains of one of America’s most important occupations.

Table of Contents:
Preface: Saints and SlouchesAcknowledgements IntroductionSection 1: The Art and Craft Part IChapter 1 Late for ClassChapter 2 The Crying Closet Chapter 3 Design and Conquer Chapter 4 Teaching is Coaching Chapter 5 Behind the Veil Chapter 6 Homework—To Assign or Not to Assign Chapter 7 Making the Grade Chapter 8 Teaching Tupac; or, Outposts of AffluenceSection 2: The Lunchroom Chapter 9 Sticker Shock Chapter 10 Crop Dusting Chapter 11 That’s What Mentors Are For Chapter 12 The Weight Chapter 13 Happy Hour Chapter 14 Chocolate Walking Tour Chapter 15 I’m Here to Teach Chapter 16 The Flip Out Section Three: The Art and Craft Part II Chapter 17 The Dandelion of Judah Chapter 18 The Zen of Teaching Chapter 19 Why It’s Better to Get Diarrhea Than a Sub Chapter 20 Phallic Gerrymandering Chapter 21 Let’s Talk About Sex Ed Chapter 22 To Be Feared or Loved Chapter 23 Roll Tape Section Four: In Loco Parentis Chapter 24 B2SN Chapter 25 Parental Cocktail Party Chapter 26 Parents Just Don’t Understand Section Five: Student, Scholar, Teenager, Kid Chapter 27 When You Least Expect It Chapter 28 She Looks Like a Referee Chapter 29 Funeral for a Fallen Player Chapter 30 Why Jessie Should Attend Pomona Pitzer Chapter 31 Thinking about Jae Chapter 32 The Sheepdog and the Wolf Section Six: More than a Classroom Teacher Chapter 33 Sibling Tricycle Grudge Match Chapter 34 Staff Infections Chapter 35 Never Chaperone a High School Dance Chapter 36 How Do You Say “Teacher” in French? Chapter 37 Of Unions, Cows, and Cheese Epilogue: Who Cares? About the Author

About the Author :
Aaron Pribble is the author of Pitching in the Promised Land: A Story of the First and Only Season in the Israel Baseball League (2011). An award-winning educator whose work includes “Pribble is a Chiller”: Student Input and Teacher Evaluations, Dreaming of Baseball in Havana,and Fastball in the Desert among other publications, Aaron teaches social studies at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California.

Review :
Teacherland delivers an up-close-and-personal account of the lives of teachers. If you want to go beyond the saints-or-sinners accounts of public education and understand what schools are really like, this book deserves to be at the very top of your reading list. Aaron Pribble's Teacherland adds an important and poignant look at teaching through a practitioner's perspective. Told largely as a series of evocative and thought-provoking vignettes, the book challenges much of the overheated and simplistic political rhetoric surrounding education, offering readers a vastly more nuanced, creative, and memorable look at this vitally important profession. If I were still training teachers, this would be my number one required text. It is insightful, very practical, and delightfully written—among the most creative books for teachers I’ve ever read. No book can produce a good teacher. But if one could, this would be it! Not since Up the Down Staircase has there been a book about teaching that is as incisive, funny and interesting as Teacherland, written by a long-time teacher whose credentials include a best-selling book about baseball. This one gets an A plus. Everybody seems to have a voice about education except educators themselves, who are often painted by pundits and policy makers in broad stereotypes—the "bad teacher" or the superhero. With humor, honesty, and humility, Pribble provides the antidote: a work of witness by a real, human teacher reflecting on the craft and the meaning of an authentic education.