Overall an inspirational text-- I read a library copy, and now I think I might purchase it for myself so that I can go back to it every once in a while when teaching seems a bit too big for me. I appreciate it for the core messages that the teachers tried to send, though it doesn't mean I don't have my own criticism of it. Most of the teachers came from the East Coast which rendered them not as representative of the teacher population as well as their students not as representative of the student population across the United States. Moreover, although I don't think the teacher workforce in the U.S. is that diverse anyway, I would also love to see teachers from more diverse background culturally, religiously, etc. such as Asian teachers, Jewish teachers, for example, and how it's played out in their career, if it has affected their career at all, etc.
Thought I would love it, but not so much. While this book claims to contain essays from all kinds of teachers, most were from the Boston or New York areas and primarily from urban schools. I would have preferred a wider cross-section of stories. For some reason I found myself skimming through most of it. However, reading this made me think about what I would say if I wrote an essay of my own.