There Are No Shortcuts

There Are No Shortcuts, by Rafe Esquith

Read after leaving it on my bookcase since June 2003.

This book, written by a Los Angeles teacher, was, I dunno...interesting. Sort of. I guess what he was saying wasn't anything new or spectacular to me. I think (or at least, hope) most teachers go into the profession because they want to make a difference and do the right thing, and at least in their B.Ed. year (or equivalent) they are inspired to do just that. Over time, for the most part that I've been exposed to, I notice that teachers seem to care less and less. Like they're just going through the paces. That they're getting tired of doing new and exciting things. Of course there are exceptions to this, and luckily some of the teachers I'd had over the years fall into this category.
Anyway, the author was telling a little bit about his career, what he tries to do in his class, the lessons that he tries to instill in his students. It sounds pretty impressive, what he gets his students to accomplish in grade 5, students from a "rough" part of town. So as vague as I sometimes try to be on this blog, I think I've said a couple times by accident, or it's basically obvious that I'm a teacher. And I'd like to hope that I'm still pretty driven to be creative, be the best person I can possibly be, inspire my students to be better, push my students to their limits, try to learn about myself through my students, etc etc etc, so maybe that's why this book didn't have that much of an effect on me. I mean, because the author's trying to inspire teachers to do something better, but I'm still at the point that I want to accomplish all of these things anyway. Unfortunately I didn't feel like I learned many little hints about how I can be as accomplished as the author, accept I seemed to get the vibe that he really didn't care about what administrators think. I got the vibe that he always pushed the limits, risked getting fired for doing certain things...and that he is encouraging others to follow suit. I'm not too sure if I want to do that right now. That was the point though, that teachers should take risks, and fight the system, and do whatever had to be done, but realistically, I don't think it can happen right now. Maybe that's not true, maybe I'm just too scared to do it, but I'm happy with that. I still think that I'm making a little bit of a difference. I think courage takes time to grow, and maybe after a little while, I'll feel more comfortable pushing the envelope. His accomplishments do sound impressive, but something about the book just left me uneasy. I don't know if it was that he was really boasting about what he does in his book (I guess the whole point of the book was for him to talk about himself as a teacher), or the "breaking of the rules" thing that I mentioned before. I don't know. It wasn't completely horrible, but the book didn't blow me away.
It was/is nice to know that there are other people out there who are trying to make a difference. To try to make a difference in the future generation.

Another book read. I'm on a roll!