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Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher
In this powerful, eloquent story of his return to the classroom, a former teacher offers a rousing defense of his beleaguered vocation Perhaps no profession is so constantly discussed, regulated, and maligned by non-practitioners as teaching. The voices of the teachers themselves are conspicuously missing. Defying this trend, teacher and writer Garret Keizer takes us to school―literally―in this arresting account of his return to the same rural Vermont high school where he taught fourteen years ago. Much has changed since then―a former student is his principal, standardized testing is the reigning god, and smoking in the boys' room has been supplanted by texting in the boys' room. More familiar are the effects of poverty, the exuberance of youth, and the staggering workload that technology has done as much to increase as to lighten. Telling the story of Keizer's year in the classroom, Getting Schooled takes us everywhere a teacher might from field trips to school plays to town meetings, from a kid's eureka moment to a parent's dark night of the soul. At once fiercely critical and deeply contemplative, Keizer exposes the obstacles that teachers face daily―and along the way takes aim at some cherished that public education is doomed, that the heroic teacher is the cure for all that ails education, that educational reform can serve as a cheap substitute for societal reformation. Angry, humorous, and always hopeful, Getting Schooled is as good an argument as we are likely to hear for a substantive reassessment of our schools and those who struggle in them.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published August 5, 2014
18 people are currently reading
777 people want to read
About the author
Garret Keizer
12 books30 followersGarret Keizer is the author of eight books, the most recent of which are Getting Schooled and Privacy. A contributing editor of Harper's Magazine and a Guggenheim Fellow, he has written for Lapham's Quarterly, the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications.
You can learn more about Keizer's work and also contact him at his website:
http://www.garretkeizer.com
The website of his current publisher is here:
http://us.macmillan.com/author/garret...
You can learn more about Keizer's work and also contact him at his website:
http://www.garretkeizer.com
The website of his current publisher is here:
http://us.macmillan.com/author/garret...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
February 12, 2018
I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. The author has a chatty style and while I generally am very fond of authors who chat to me, there is a danger that I might not like them personally and that can take away from the whole book. That said, this guy grew on me.
This is a particularly American story - the wife of a man who had given up teaching years before wants to, just once, be able to work in an 'adult' job. But her working in an adult job means that he can't go on being basically 'freelance' because, well, you can't be without health insurance in the US. So, he has to go back to being a teacher after 20 years. This is the story of his year teaching back at the school he had taught in previously and the various ways that played around with his mind.
A lot of this is really quite lovely. The problem is that teaching is one of those jobs that if you do it well you can never be sure if you are really doing it well, if you know what I mean. You worry and fret over what you probably ought to have said, which is almost always different from what you did say. Teaching is an occupation where 'if only' plays a ridiculously large role. But this is nice too because he is able to reflect on all this as he goes. He also gets to talk about all of the changes that have occurred since he left, the new technologies that are now ubiquitous, but that he feels often seem to be pointless. That is, that they don't really help students to learn and rather create a wealth gap that makes poor children all the more poor
There is a nice bit of this where he remembers the first time he was a teacher and his daughter saying to him that she would have liked to have had two daddies, one who spent his time marking and lesson planning and another to spend time with her - and he feels the pain of this mostly because he knows it is true. As someone how has also struggled to segment his life into neat and isolated roles, I had very little trouble understanding his regrets.
What I liked most about this was that while he does his best to teach the kids under his charge, he doesn't for a minute think that education is what will save them. Rather, he knows that the economic and social disadvantages these children suffer need economic, social and political solutions, rather than educational ones. Having read quite a few books over the last couple of years by and about American educators, it is good that some get that you can still think education is worthwhile, even without thinking it is the panacea for all social evils.
I thought while I was reading this that this really would be a great book for someone thinking of becoming a teacher - not because he tells you how best to manage your classroom, or how to motivate students or even to improve their test scores, but rather the important lessons of how to remain true to yourself and to your students and how to show that - you know, how to choose to be respectful of your students and of their rights while also not being a walk over. Life has no simple answers, everything is context bound, but I had no trouble believing this man's students enjoyed his lessons.
This is a particularly American story - the wife of a man who had given up teaching years before wants to, just once, be able to work in an 'adult' job. But her working in an adult job means that he can't go on being basically 'freelance' because, well, you can't be without health insurance in the US. So, he has to go back to being a teacher after 20 years. This is the story of his year teaching back at the school he had taught in previously and the various ways that played around with his mind.
A lot of this is really quite lovely. The problem is that teaching is one of those jobs that if you do it well you can never be sure if you are really doing it well, if you know what I mean. You worry and fret over what you probably ought to have said, which is almost always different from what you did say. Teaching is an occupation where 'if only' plays a ridiculously large role. But this is nice too because he is able to reflect on all this as he goes. He also gets to talk about all of the changes that have occurred since he left, the new technologies that are now ubiquitous, but that he feels often seem to be pointless. That is, that they don't really help students to learn and rather create a wealth gap that makes poor children all the more poor
There is a nice bit of this where he remembers the first time he was a teacher and his daughter saying to him that she would have liked to have had two daddies, one who spent his time marking and lesson planning and another to spend time with her - and he feels the pain of this mostly because he knows it is true. As someone how has also struggled to segment his life into neat and isolated roles, I had very little trouble understanding his regrets.
What I liked most about this was that while he does his best to teach the kids under his charge, he doesn't for a minute think that education is what will save them. Rather, he knows that the economic and social disadvantages these children suffer need economic, social and political solutions, rather than educational ones. Having read quite a few books over the last couple of years by and about American educators, it is good that some get that you can still think education is worthwhile, even without thinking it is the panacea for all social evils.
I thought while I was reading this that this really would be a great book for someone thinking of becoming a teacher - not because he tells you how best to manage your classroom, or how to motivate students or even to improve their test scores, but rather the important lessons of how to remain true to yourself and to your students and how to show that - you know, how to choose to be respectful of your students and of their rights while also not being a walk over. Life has no simple answers, everything is context bound, but I had no trouble believing this man's students enjoyed his lessons.
August 29, 2014
I read about this in last week's NY TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW and promptly bought it on Kindle. Three pages in and the voice captivated me. It was a voice from the classroom that sounded a lot like mine. A lot like a teacher who knows the thrill, the frustration, and the challenge that is teaching.
It didn't hurt that author Garret Keizer's year-long dispatch came from neighboring Vermont, but I think any teacher can identify with this book -- and any non-teacher can get a teacher's-eye view of what life in the classroom's really like, too.
This is not a how-to book, and it does not contain any lesson plans where the kids perform wondrously and the teacher looks like the second coming of the academic Christ. It's just one English teacher's story of a year, of the students he loved and fellow teachers he cared about, of the fallouts and pitfalls he suffered, of the town life swirling about him and how it affected the kids and vice versa.
A curmudgeon? Perhaps. A stickler? Perhaps again. But Keizer is not an ostrich-head-in-the-sand-style old schooler, he's a savvy one. His ideas mean something. His love of great literature is palpable. And, ultimately, his self-doubt wins the reader over. We care not only about his fortunes but those of his troubled students'.
In the end I felt a little like Holden Caulfield, who always wanted to call an author up when he finished a book he hated to part with. But I suspected -- incorrectly -- that Keizer was just some random Vermont teacher or other, one who was inspired to write a book "out of the blue."
In fact, Keizer is a regular writer for Harper's magazine and the author of eight previous books. A disappointment of sorts? Maybe, if you hold romantic notions of discovering raw teacher/authors whose debuts hit an uncanny note of truth, but what the heck, maybe I'll e-mail the guy. He deserves the huzzah anyway, whether he responds or, more likely, not.
It didn't hurt that author Garret Keizer's year-long dispatch came from neighboring Vermont, but I think any teacher can identify with this book -- and any non-teacher can get a teacher's-eye view of what life in the classroom's really like, too.
This is not a how-to book, and it does not contain any lesson plans where the kids perform wondrously and the teacher looks like the second coming of the academic Christ. It's just one English teacher's story of a year, of the students he loved and fellow teachers he cared about, of the fallouts and pitfalls he suffered, of the town life swirling about him and how it affected the kids and vice versa.
A curmudgeon? Perhaps. A stickler? Perhaps again. But Keizer is not an ostrich-head-in-the-sand-style old schooler, he's a savvy one. His ideas mean something. His love of great literature is palpable. And, ultimately, his self-doubt wins the reader over. We care not only about his fortunes but those of his troubled students'.
In the end I felt a little like Holden Caulfield, who always wanted to call an author up when he finished a book he hated to part with. But I suspected -- incorrectly -- that Keizer was just some random Vermont teacher or other, one who was inspired to write a book "out of the blue."
In fact, Keizer is a regular writer for Harper's magazine and the author of eight previous books. A disappointment of sorts? Maybe, if you hold romantic notions of discovering raw teacher/authors whose debuts hit an uncanny note of truth, but what the heck, maybe I'll e-mail the guy. He deserves the huzzah anyway, whether he responds or, more likely, not.
November 28, 2014
I read lots of education books. It's my personal passion and fascination. And this is, hands-down, the best education book I've read in years, settling into place with my all-time favorites: "On Teaching" (Herb Kohl), volumes from Mike Rose, Diane Ravitch, Parker Palmer and Tracy Kidder.
Grindingly honest yet tenderly reflective, Keizer shares the month-by-month internal monologue of a teaching veteran who has moved on, but returns for a (presumably) final year in the classroom, mostly for the insurance. He takes us through the cycle of a year--constantly disrupted planning, the unexpected and gleeful triumphs, the frustrations of working with teenagers whose potential far outstrips their actual output. It is immediately apparent that Keizer has no patience with phone-it-in teaching; he's scrupulously prepared and diligent with all his students--the anxious, the disaffected, the similarly diligent. It's a story that's no less engaging for its pedestrian familiarity--anyone who's been in the classroom will recognize the ordinary but crucial relationship-building and the tap-dance of keeping those relationships based on human regard, rather than control mechanisms.
The best parts of the narrative, however, are Keizer's asides: incisive commentary on changes in education practice, reflections on students' complacency toward bitter injustice in the "real world," his struggle to stay engaged with his students when he's out sick with the flu. His description of how iPad Apps overrun an ordinary teaching strategy--technology wins, every time, but it changes intent and outcomes--is priceless.
My favorite passage (and my copy is highlighted and annotated to extremes) is Keizer's description of why he assigned ordinary 10th graders a research paper, making a monumental effort to teach the complex skill of research and producing new thought, content and credible text from existing knowledge. It's the best rationale I've ever considered for pushing so-called digital natives to go old school in thinking critically about what's important knowledge and what's superfluous. (He takes potshots at "critical thinking," too.)
The writing is crisp and rather delicious. Very highly recommended, for teachers and anyone interested in transforming education.
Grindingly honest yet tenderly reflective, Keizer shares the month-by-month internal monologue of a teaching veteran who has moved on, but returns for a (presumably) final year in the classroom, mostly for the insurance. He takes us through the cycle of a year--constantly disrupted planning, the unexpected and gleeful triumphs, the frustrations of working with teenagers whose potential far outstrips their actual output. It is immediately apparent that Keizer has no patience with phone-it-in teaching; he's scrupulously prepared and diligent with all his students--the anxious, the disaffected, the similarly diligent. It's a story that's no less engaging for its pedestrian familiarity--anyone who's been in the classroom will recognize the ordinary but crucial relationship-building and the tap-dance of keeping those relationships based on human regard, rather than control mechanisms.
The best parts of the narrative, however, are Keizer's asides: incisive commentary on changes in education practice, reflections on students' complacency toward bitter injustice in the "real world," his struggle to stay engaged with his students when he's out sick with the flu. His description of how iPad Apps overrun an ordinary teaching strategy--technology wins, every time, but it changes intent and outcomes--is priceless.
My favorite passage (and my copy is highlighted and annotated to extremes) is Keizer's description of why he assigned ordinary 10th graders a research paper, making a monumental effort to teach the complex skill of research and producing new thought, content and credible text from existing knowledge. It's the best rationale I've ever considered for pushing so-called digital natives to go old school in thinking critically about what's important knowledge and what's superfluous. (He takes potshots at "critical thinking," too.)
The writing is crisp and rather delicious. Very highly recommended, for teachers and anyone interested in transforming education.
October 15, 2014
Keizer's perspective is unique. He's a one-time high school teacher who retired to pursue a writing career and then returned to teaching 15 years later. Aside from the insights on modern education that he brings to the table, his writing style is deft, lyrical, and humorous - even when he's being a curmudgeon (and I think he has a right to be) about the frustration of any interruption to the learning process. This would include standardized testing, added bureaucratic hours caused by "time-saving" computer-based documentation and grading, and a lack of classroom focus due to the hardships students face in their lives, often beyond a teacher's ability to help. If you're disillusioned with the political bickering that surrounds education these days, take a break and walk through a real classroom, month by month, with Mr. Keizer. Every kid should have such a teacher.
October 22, 2014
This wonderful, thoughtful, passionate book should be at the top of the reading list for every teacher, every school administrator, every school board member, and every parent who takes seriously her or his child's education and development, particularly in the high school years. I know Garret Keizer personally and have heard him speak; I know how his passion and eloquence can light up a room. They also spark from these pages. Seldom does a veteran and well-tooled author venture into a high school classroom for an extended period "in the trenches" and then give an account of the whole. There is no detachment here; Keizer is "all in," and consequently is able to see the realities of school, and its context in life, through his students' eyes as well as his own. A parent himself, he also understands -- and judges -- the trials, triumphs, and defects of parenting.
Read this book!
Read this book!
September 13, 2016
I'm not sure how this book would impact those who have never taught in school classrooms, but any teacher can easily relate to Keizer's account here. A former English teacher who left for a career as an independent writer and columnist, the author describes a one-year return to the classroom and the changes and challenges encountered. Laced at times with frustration, anger, philosophy and a Bill Bryson-like humor, I expect this book to be enjoyed by those who have shared the task of teaching in today's educational environment. Strongly recommended to teachers, and no doubt of above average interest to any parent who wonders what it's like to enter the classroom today.
This book was received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This book was received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
August 25, 2014
I love this book. It is an honest depiction of the internal conflicts teachers experience, a commentary on the devaluation of experts in education, and so much more.
I've posted a detailed review on my blog. http://www.evolvingenglishteacher.blo...
I've posted a detailed review on my blog. http://www.evolvingenglishteacher.blo...
April 30, 2014
Keizer, Garret. Getting Schooled: The Re-education of an American Teacher. Holt. Aug. 2014. 320p. ISBN 9780805096439. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780805096446. MEMOIR
A one-time teacher and author of the amaaaaazing The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want, Keizer returns to the classroom after 14 years off. Right on page 1 he sets a simple, honest tone for the book by disclosing that he’s 57 and “signed on mainly because my wife and I needed the health insurance.” This refreshing and anti-bullshit style has a dull double edge that distills huge swaths of discontent about teaching. There are legitimate beefs, such as how exhausting the profession is and how much time is squandered on nonsense. And there is some whining, from discontent with the state of the teacher’s lounge to how much and how loudly everyone talks, to “the biggest change in education,” what Keizer sees as a counterproductive “move toward uniform instruction.” It would be easy to dismiss the author as a grinchy old man but for his huge heart. He obviously cares deeply about his students, about fairness in the classroom, and about giving his best effort. In return he asks for the best efforts of students—a standard that frequently runs counter to the rest of the school environment. The book’s chief appeal is an overarching surfeit of wisdom and keen perspective, such as when he observes that “[o]ften the most neglected kids in a school system are not the so-called trouble children; they’re the struggling but mostly cooperative children whom no one troubles to give a second thought.” VERDICT One word: Magnificent. Required reading for anyone even remotely involved in education and those who love them.
Find this review and others at Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
A one-time teacher and author of the amaaaaazing The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want, Keizer returns to the classroom after 14 years off. Right on page 1 he sets a simple, honest tone for the book by disclosing that he’s 57 and “signed on mainly because my wife and I needed the health insurance.” This refreshing and anti-bullshit style has a dull double edge that distills huge swaths of discontent about teaching. There are legitimate beefs, such as how exhausting the profession is and how much time is squandered on nonsense. And there is some whining, from discontent with the state of the teacher’s lounge to how much and how loudly everyone talks, to “the biggest change in education,” what Keizer sees as a counterproductive “move toward uniform instruction.” It would be easy to dismiss the author as a grinchy old man but for his huge heart. He obviously cares deeply about his students, about fairness in the classroom, and about giving his best effort. In return he asks for the best efforts of students—a standard that frequently runs counter to the rest of the school environment. The book’s chief appeal is an overarching surfeit of wisdom and keen perspective, such as when he observes that “[o]ften the most neglected kids in a school system are not the so-called trouble children; they’re the struggling but mostly cooperative children whom no one troubles to give a second thought.” VERDICT One word: Magnificent. Required reading for anyone even remotely involved in education and those who love them.
Find this review and others at Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
September 16, 2014
A wonderful, painful glide through Garret Keizer's one-year return to teaching at the high school that launched his teaching career. You can read the details above.
While many people will find themselves at odds with Keizer's 70s pedagogy and a priori rejection of all things technological, he gets the emotional toll that teaching takes and the constant, ambivalent relationship between success and failure.
He shows us the taxing line between emotional connection and boundaries, constantly redrawn in the flux of give and take and compromise. No amount of planning will ever guarantee success. Every teacher will fail in their role for some student(s) at some point(s) in time: failure is, in a sense, guaranteed. Performance in school and investment in education can be a poor predictor of real financial and (more importantly) emotional success.
But he loves it. He hates it, yes, and he is happy to leave, but odi et amo. He is hooked in, and his long reflection paints a clearer picture of what it is to be sucked into the anxious, nerve-wracking, at time soul-dominating profession (granted, he's deeper in it than almost anyone else) and to draw some unreal soul nourishment from it.
I am also fixated on the time and place: Keizer's retirement in June 2011 took place a few miles across the White River from my entry to the profession at the Oliverian School in Northwestern New Hampshire that same month.
This book made me want to cry. I l-o-v-e the ending.
Keizer is sort of a blowhard, but I'll cut him a break on this one for being (essentially) a rocking chair grandpa.
While many people will find themselves at odds with Keizer's 70s pedagogy and a priori rejection of all things technological, he gets the emotional toll that teaching takes and the constant, ambivalent relationship between success and failure.
He shows us the taxing line between emotional connection and boundaries, constantly redrawn in the flux of give and take and compromise. No amount of planning will ever guarantee success. Every teacher will fail in their role for some student(s) at some point(s) in time: failure is, in a sense, guaranteed. Performance in school and investment in education can be a poor predictor of real financial and (more importantly) emotional success.
But he loves it. He hates it, yes, and he is happy to leave, but odi et amo. He is hooked in, and his long reflection paints a clearer picture of what it is to be sucked into the anxious, nerve-wracking, at time soul-dominating profession (granted, he's deeper in it than almost anyone else) and to draw some unreal soul nourishment from it.
I am also fixated on the time and place: Keizer's retirement in June 2011 took place a few miles across the White River from my entry to the profession at the Oliverian School in Northwestern New Hampshire that same month.
This book made me want to cry. I l-o-v-e the ending.
Keizer is sort of a blowhard, but I'll cut him a break on this one for being (essentially) a rocking chair grandpa.
August 23, 2014
Keizer's book was interesting to me on many levels. I recognized myself in his first anecdotes of being a child in school - having a love-hate relationship with it and being formed in the best of ways by the teachers who chose to "howl at the moon" of their own passions rather than "sniff the hindquarters of the faculty pack". I was also a teacher and a guidance counselor as well as an author, and recognized with painful clarity the interactions he had with students that were sometimes beautiful and sometimes teeth-grindingly frustrating. I understood how he found his work at the school important but longed to be back to the paper and pen and celebrated his eventual return to his calling.
Outside of the personal effect the book had, I found the author skillfully brings us along with him on the journey of his memories and reflections and ends each chapter with an "aha" moment or turn of phrase that connects the threads of his thoughts in a most satisfying way. This could have been a dry, didactic topic, but in the hands of a writer like Keizer, it was a far cry from that. This book touched me very personally and I enjoyed every page.
Outside of the personal effect the book had, I found the author skillfully brings us along with him on the journey of his memories and reflections and ends each chapter with an "aha" moment or turn of phrase that connects the threads of his thoughts in a most satisfying way. This could have been a dry, didactic topic, but in the hands of a writer like Keizer, it was a far cry from that. This book touched me very personally and I enjoyed every page.
September 27, 2014
I really liked this book. I am a teacher educator, about the same age as this author, who finds much to admire in the people involved in education, both teachers and students, but also finds much in the system that is very wearing currently. The author returns to teach for one year to teach English at the rural Vermont high school he had left fourteen years earlier. As he takes us through that year, I appreciated how Garret Keizer worked to get his students interested in reading and writing, and how much he cared for them and most of his fellow teachers. I liked his honesty in writing about how the constant measurement and students and the overuse of technology was taking away from providing students with the best education. Teachers will find much they can relate to in this book, and others will find an open and honest portrayal of teaching in present day America.
November 9, 2014
Articulate, thoughtful and funny. I wouldn't have thought a high school English teacher's experiences in the classroom would have much resonance with my own life as a teacher, but the connections were pervasive and profound. Keizer says being a teacher requires love, although he does not love teaching - of this he is more than sure. Maybe it's the students he loves? Anyway, he reminded me over and over again of ways and reasons why I DO love teaching, and how profoundly blessed I am to learn my living this way. This is an astonishing gem of a book.
May 18, 2016
I did not finish this book due to the sheer struggle of beginning it. This is a really good example of an author who thinks he is hilariously witty and wise and unfortunately overcompensates his "language arts" background with wordy sentences and sarcastic holier than thou comebacks. I don't know why this man decided to be a teacher and maybe the rest of the book redeemed itself but I couldn't take anymore of his negativity and sarcasm.
December 29, 2014
This was an excellent book, and with thanks to "Nancy" who also recently commented on Goodreads, here is her review which I think is a wonderful summary and which i "liked":
"Grindingly honest yet tenderly reflective, Keizer shares the month-by-month internal monologue of a teaching veteran who has moved on, but returns for a (presumably) final year in the classroom, mostly for the insurance. He takes us through the cycle of a year--constantly disrupted planning, the unexpected and gleeful triumphs, the frustrations of working with teenagers whose potential far outstrips their actual output. It is immediately apparent that Keizer has no patience with phone-it-in teaching; he's scrupulously prepared and diligent with all his students--the anxious, the disaffected, the similarly diligent. It's a story that's no less engaging for its pedestrian familiarity--anyone who's been in the classroom will recognize the ordinary but crucial relationship-building and the tap-dance of keeping those relationships based on human regard, rather than control mechanisms.
The best parts of the narrative, however, are Keizer's asides: incisive commentary on changes in education practice, reflections on students' complacency toward bitter injustice in the "real world," his struggle to stay engaged with his students when he's out sick with the flu. His description of how iPad Apps overrun an ordinary teaching strategy--technology wins, every time, but it changes intent and outcomes--is priceless.
My favorite passage (and my copy is highlighted and annotated to extremes) is Keizer's description of why he assigned ordinary 10th graders a research paper, making a monumental effort to teach the complex skill of research and producing new thought, content and credible text from existing knowledge. It's the best rationale I've ever considered for pushing so-called digital natives to go old school in thinking critically about what's important knowledge and what's superfluous. (He takes potshots at "critical thinking," too.)
The writing is crisp and rather delicious. Very highly recommended, for teachers and anyone interested in transforming education."
"Grindingly honest yet tenderly reflective, Keizer shares the month-by-month internal monologue of a teaching veteran who has moved on, but returns for a (presumably) final year in the classroom, mostly for the insurance. He takes us through the cycle of a year--constantly disrupted planning, the unexpected and gleeful triumphs, the frustrations of working with teenagers whose potential far outstrips their actual output. It is immediately apparent that Keizer has no patience with phone-it-in teaching; he's scrupulously prepared and diligent with all his students--the anxious, the disaffected, the similarly diligent. It's a story that's no less engaging for its pedestrian familiarity--anyone who's been in the classroom will recognize the ordinary but crucial relationship-building and the tap-dance of keeping those relationships based on human regard, rather than control mechanisms.
The best parts of the narrative, however, are Keizer's asides: incisive commentary on changes in education practice, reflections on students' complacency toward bitter injustice in the "real world," his struggle to stay engaged with his students when he's out sick with the flu. His description of how iPad Apps overrun an ordinary teaching strategy--technology wins, every time, but it changes intent and outcomes--is priceless.
My favorite passage (and my copy is highlighted and annotated to extremes) is Keizer's description of why he assigned ordinary 10th graders a research paper, making a monumental effort to teach the complex skill of research and producing new thought, content and credible text from existing knowledge. It's the best rationale I've ever considered for pushing so-called digital natives to go old school in thinking critically about what's important knowledge and what's superfluous. (He takes potshots at "critical thinking," too.)
The writing is crisp and rather delicious. Very highly recommended, for teachers and anyone interested in transforming education."
March 16, 2016
Keizer is my brother in education. He, like me, started teaching long, long ago. He, like me, is a hearty proponent of a rigorous education. He, like me, left education for many years to pursue other things. He, like me, returned to education after a long hiatus to find things had both changed and remained the same.
I loved this little memoir of the year he spent back in the classroom. It was lovely and painful to see his clear look at students today. The images and quotes he put up on the walls of his classroom that were never commented on by the students. Disturbing and yet something that I, too, have observed, something that I, too, don’t quite understand. The strength of students in light of the troubles they face at home. The disappointments of a teacher who hopes for more from his students and the occasional unexpected triumphs of a teacher with a lesson that resonates with the classes.
(I have only one criticism; had I been his editor, I’d have asked Keizer to soften his diatribes against American capitalism as I found these to be a little annoying in light of his subject.)
Recommended.
February 18, 2015
He nailed it. Garret Keizer captured what it is like to be a teacher. He very eloquently expressed many of the thoughts that I had while I was a high school teacher for 25 years. He reminded me of all of the stresses and of all of the joys of teaching. He had conversations with students that reminded of conversations that I had, often conversations that haunt you afterwards with regrets for something you said or regrets for something you didn't say. He captured the satisfaction you feel when a former student tells you that they liked your class and that you were a positive influence on their life. Keizer also expressed a lot of the frustrations that teachers have about standardized testing and about the failure to deal with the poverty that keeps kids from learning. This is a good book for anyone who wants to know what it's like to be a teacher.
October 5, 2014
In a nutshell review: I should have caught on to this within the first few pages of the book, but Keizer, although he goes above and beyond for his students, is a curmudgeon. He repeatedly declared that he was "resentful" of expectations such as using an online grading system, and participating in a team-building exercise with colleagues. That being said, Keizer imparts wisdom and insight from the vantage point of one who returned to teaching with ambivalence; he's an outsider, not a zealot, and there are lessons to be learned from his perspective. Lesson one: The first priority of a teacher is to care for kids. PowerSchool and new standards will not actually care for kids. This is the purview of a teacher, first and foremost.
August 7, 2014
Although my teaching situation is significantly different than Keizer's--different parts of the country, different ages, different subjects, etc.--much of what he writes in this memoir explains my situation perfectly. Teachers will love this book because it validates their experiences. But teachers are not the audience that needs to read this book. Lawmakers, policy makers, parents, and all those who judge schools and teachers and find them lacking, need to read this book. Then they can become advocates for positive change in our educational system, while recognizing, as Keizer points out, that ultimately educational reform is impossible without social change.
February 1, 2015
I heard the Garret Keizer interviewed on Vermont Public Radio and ordered the book right away. He is a compassionate man with deep insight into the changes in education and society that have occurred over the last 30 years. His perspective is unique as he ventures back into the classroom for a single year after many years away. He deeply understands the effects of poverty (in this case, rural poverty) and does all he can for his students. I recommend this book to anyone who has ever faced the challenges of teaching and to anyone who wants to know what great teaching is really about.
May 30, 2015
Teaching fascinates me as it does Garret Keizer. I loved this passage:
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, though I am, at the reluctance of many students to consult books. I expected that locating books might be an issue for some of them, but the unwillingness even to open the books I help them locate still puzzles me. I recall times in past years when a student stumped over a research paper would take a newfound source from a teacher's hands as if it were a rich uncles's will. Not so much now.
May 12, 2015
Passed on to me by a neighbor who is a retired teacher, I found this book to include a number of perfectly written teacher experiences. I like the way it is laid out with the chapters being the months of the school year. I found myself remembering similar thoughts / feelings when reviewing my time as a public school teacher - a career which has always felt to me to be one of the highest callings.
November 2, 2014
No clear, satisfying conclusions, but the issues presented aren't susceptible to easy solutions. Took me a bit to warm to the author, but ultimately I found the book thoughtful and well written. If all public school teachers were like the author, public education would be in great shape.
December 12, 2014
Getting Schooled did not devolve into a "teacher-hero" narrative as I feared it might. Some genuine wisdom mixed in with mostly reconstructed ideology. A must read for anyone interested in US American schools.
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December 8, 2015I tried reading this and the defeatist attitude and arrogance resulted me in stopping 50 pages in.
April 16, 2018
Extremely well-written picture of what teaching can be like. While I related to a lot of what Keizer was talking about regarding students and their economic situations, I couldn't help but be frustrated with him for some of his requirements and stubbornness. Sometimes we have to adapt, and just because something is new doesn't mean it's wrong; an aversion to technology in today's educational climate just doesn't make sense.
Keizer really seemed to hate teaching, too. Sometimes I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not regarding teaching processes, but most of the time I got the impression that, while he enjoyed getting to know people (regardless of age), he really despised the actual process of teaching. In spite of this, he seems to have done a good job of it, at least according to his own opinion.
Keizer really seemed to hate teaching, too. Sometimes I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not regarding teaching processes, but most of the time I got the impression that, while he enjoyed getting to know people (regardless of age), he really despised the actual process of teaching. In spite of this, he seems to have done a good job of it, at least according to his own opinion.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 19, 2019
4.5 - I miss teenagers! This book really brought me back to my days in secondary education. With a handful of special education scenarios thrown in just to nail down the mirroring of my experience. The author takes us, month by month, through a year of teaching English in a rural Vermont high school after a 14 year hiatus. Has the system changed? Absolutely. Testing and data reign supreme. Listening to him try to master the new computerized grading and attendance systems was painful and humorous. Have the kids changed? Sure, if judged by surface characteristics and the culture in which they’ve been reared. But inside? Their needs? Their vulnerabilities? No. Sooo many funny anecdotes. So many moving moments. I am still giggling about the last half of April chapter. Will re-read. Loved this book!
January 3, 2018
3.5 Keizer gives us the other side of the desk, and crafts a rich auto-ethnography of his mercurial attitudes toward teaching. It made me reflect on my high school experience and gave me empathy for my teachers where before there were flat shades of fondness, admiration, or dislike. The book is divided into months, which also makes the reader count down to June along with the author. Artfully, perhaps, we feel the tiredness of marginalized American public schools, and one leaves the book with an uneasy mix of existential acceptance and righteous anger for having let down the young.
April 21, 2018
An educator's job is one of the most challenging, underappreciated, underpaid (relative to the value they deliver) one here in the United States. I know that for a fact because I live with one.
In this book, the author recounts his one-year experience as a substitute teacher in a rural Vermont public school. It's an interesting and engaging book and you'll understand why I made that first statement. The author's humorous and honest writing style makes the read worthwhile nonetheless.
In this book, the author recounts his one-year experience as a substitute teacher in a rural Vermont public school. It's an interesting and engaging book and you'll understand why I made that first statement. The author's humorous and honest writing style makes the read worthwhile nonetheless.
December 17, 2017
A beautifully written memoir of going back to teach public high school after many years away. Keizer captures the many contradictory elements that make up teaching. In many ways he captures my own love-hate relationship with the profession and how we are viewed by our students and the public.
Keizer has an excellent writing style. I'd like to pick up other books by him.
Keizer has an excellent writing style. I'd like to pick up other books by him.
January 22, 2018
A year in the life of a high school English teacher in rural Vermont. Keizer, a professional writer, had taught at this same school many years ago. He returns to teaching reluctantly, even though he's a good teacher and cares deeply about his subject and his students. In fact, he cares so passionately that it hurts, at times, and he works so hard that by spring he falls seriously ill with pneumonia.
Witty and self-critical, Keizer shows us just why he loves teaching and why it drives him crazy. His students are endearing, maddening, sometimes pathetically vulnerable, sometimes surprisingly mature and compassionate. In some cases Keizer can make a difference for them, but often the deciding factors in young people's lives are their family situation or larger social forces. Getting Schooled is an engrossing read, and an invaluable book for anyone who wants to understand teachers and students, and how much is at stake in public education.
Witty and self-critical, Keizer shows us just why he loves teaching and why it drives him crazy. His students are endearing, maddening, sometimes pathetically vulnerable, sometimes surprisingly mature and compassionate. In some cases Keizer can make a difference for them, but often the deciding factors in young people's lives are their family situation or larger social forces. Getting Schooled is an engrossing read, and an invaluable book for anyone who wants to understand teachers and students, and how much is at stake in public education.
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