Reviews

The Classroom by Melissa Goodrich, Dana Diehl

pyrrhicspondee's review

5.0

A few years ago, I bought this book over the internet from one of its authors because it sounded right up my alley. I long tried to assemble a really good unit on the ideals and practices of American education, and finding fiction for it was surprisingly difficult. I finally got around to reading this, now that I have all this time, and I could kick myself for waiting so long. These stories were so good--so pleasurable. And now that we're doing remote learning and I have one more unit to squeeze out for my seniors, I'm returning to this idea of how school works. I'm gonna use a few stories from this collection, a story from Danielle Evans' "Before You Suffocate Your Own Food Self," and we'll use Marxist theory to analyze how schooling as an institution benefits some and (obviously) leaves others in the cold.

Lots of first-person plural narrators, lots of magical realism, and lots of fun plot to keep the pace going. The last story made me cry, too. If you are also a teacher, I highly recommend this collection.