Educating Case

This book is a diary of Madame Esme's first year of teaching fifth grade in Chicago. In the beginning, Madame Esme works like crazy to be helpful to her administrator, who she later determines is arrogant and ignorant. She describes getting her first classroom ready with great detail and excitement. Madame Esme is unconventional in her approach to education. She begins each day with a positive greeting, a place where students can dump their bad feelings, and a word that each student picks to learn. She renames the all subject areas in order to remove the negative connotations the subjects have taken on through her students' previous experience and failure. As the day progress, Madame Esme discusses in detail the trials and frustrations she feels with her students, parents and her administrator. She uses humor, sarcasm, and quick thinking

Personal Opinion:

What a great book! I could relate to Madame Esme. I loved her opinions of state standards, her unconventional approach, her caring for her students, her no nonsense consistency with classroom management, and her enthusiasm for her job and her students. My favorite characteristic of Madame Esme was that she never yielded from the things she believed in or from things that were irrelevant to her goal of creating great learners. She believed in her practice and truly took what she knew about children and how children learned and used it to create a community of learners.

Relevance:

Madame Esme's students were from poor, abusive families. She never tried to "fix" the families. Instead she offered a safe and compassionate environment in the classroom where the students left their baggage at the door and where able to escape their miserable lives for a while. Madame Esme accepted her students for her they were and offered them insight in to who they could be. She took what "we" as teacher are taught about children and put it into practice instead of following the curriculum guidelines set up by bureaucrats and had great success.