Educating ESME: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

A pop culture phenomenon (Publishers Weekly)

"Screaming funny" (Booklist)

"Funny, poignant, and even sad. You'll find yourself laughing at places, ready to cry at others." (The Arizona Republic)

"It should be read by anyone who's interested in the future of public education." (Boston Phoenix Literary Section)

"Esme is a teacher I'd hire tomorrow. There is nothing the profession needs more than such creative intelligent, combative, and loving teachers." ( Herbert Kohl, author of 36 Children)

Esme Raji Codell has come to teach. Fresh-mouthed and miniskirted, this irrepressible spirit does the cha-cha during multiplication lessons, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. In Educating Esme, the diary of her first year teaching in a Chicago public school, she opens a window into a real-life classroom. While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted teacher changes her student's lives forever.

Winner, Memoir of the Year, ForeWord magazine

Winner, Alex Award for Outstanding Book for Young Adult Readers

With over 50,000 copies sold in hardcover, this "pop culture phenomenon" ("Publishers Weekly") is now available in paperback. "Educating Esm" is the uncensored diary of Codell's first year teaching in a Chicago public school.

In this diary of her first year teaching in a Chicago state school, Esme Codell opens a window into the closed world of the real-life classroom. She finds herself battling bureaucrats, gang members, inflexible administrators, angry children and her own insecurities.

A pop culture phenomenon (Publishers Weekly)

"Screaming funny" (Booklist)

"Funny, poignant, and even sad. You'll find yourself laughing at places, ready to cry at others." (The Arizona Republic)

"It should be read by anyone who's interested in the future of public education." (Boston Phoenix Literary Section)

"Esme is a teacher I'd hire tomorrow. There is nothing the profession needs more than such creative intelligent, combative, and loving teachers." ( Herbert Kohl, author of 36 Children)

Esme Raji Codell has come to teach. Fresh-mouthed and miniskirted, this irrepressible spirit does the cha-cha during multiplication lessons, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. In Educating Esme, the diary of her first year teaching in a Chicago public school, she opens a window into a real-life classroom. While battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted teacher changes her student's lives forever.

Winner, Memoir of the Year, ForeWord magazine

Winner, Alex Award for Outstanding Book for Young Adult Readers

There aren't too many teachers who are written about in the New Yorker, People, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, and excerpted in Reader's Digest. But Esm Raji Codell is no ordinary teacher. An irrepressible spirit, she wears costumes in the classroom, dances with the kids during math lessons, rollerskates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library.

In Educating Esm, the uncensored diary of her first year teaching in a Chicago public school, she opens a window into the closed world of a real-life classroom. Refusing to let anything get in the way of delivering the education her fifth-graders deserve, this dedicated teacher finds herself battling bureaucrats, gang members, inflexible administrators, angry children, and her own insecurities, while at the same time changing her students' lives forever.

Now in paperback, here is the book People called "hilarious," Booklist called "screamingly funny," Greensboro News and Record called "brilliantly conceived," and the Boston Phoenix noted "should be read by anyone who's interested in the future of public education."