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marilynbg's review against another edition
5.0
Michael Copperman writes about teaching with an appealing blend of confidence and humility. In my experience, no teacher can succeed without both of these. As a teacher I always long to discover and develop every student’s unique gifts, and above all to grow alongside them. Copperman leans his full weight into the shoulder at the wheel in his two-year Teach for America assignment, then shows us how his failures are his greatest life lessons. He writes as a mixed-race Asian American, as a Stanford graduate, as a man of slight build that black kids in Promise, Mississippi call "Chinaman" and white folks in the Delta stare at with suspicion.
He confronts his own privilege as a Stanford graduate, and the racism ingrained in Promise’s poverty and unequal education system. Most of the black Mississippi fourth-graders of his classroom come from impoverished and broken homes, but rise above stereotyping as imaginative boys, bookish girls, enthusiastic, shy, and sometimes tragically brilliant and angry in Copperman’s individual portraits of them. I feel privileged as a reader to know their stories through his work, and inspired as a teacher to turn my doubts into challenges.
He confronts his own privilege as a Stanford graduate, and the racism ingrained in Promise’s poverty and unequal education system. Most of the black Mississippi fourth-graders of his classroom come from impoverished and broken homes, but rise above stereotyping as imaginative boys, bookish girls, enthusiastic, shy, and sometimes tragically brilliant and angry in Copperman’s individual portraits of them. I feel privileged as a reader to know their stories through his work, and inspired as a teacher to turn my doubts into challenges.
yi_shun_lai's review against another edition
5.0
This book. I read it in two sittings, interrupted only by a few hours' sleep. I really couldn't wait to get back to it. It reads like a thriller, and I mean that in the best of ways: I couldn't wait to find out what would happen to Michael, what he might learn, what conclusions he might draw.
This is such a valuable book, on multiple levels: The person who wants to know about different demographics gets to know a classroom in poverty-stricken Mississippi. The minority reader gets to hear about what it's like to be the Only One. The writer gets to luxuriate in Copperman's layered descriptions.
And the person who values humanity will be so, so glad they picked up this work, so they can pass it on, and on, and on. Read this. You won't be sorry.
This is such a valuable book, on multiple levels: The person who wants to know about different demographics gets to know a classroom in poverty-stricken Mississippi. The minority reader gets to hear about what it's like to be the Only One. The writer gets to luxuriate in Copperman's layered descriptions.
And the person who values humanity will be so, so glad they picked up this work, so they can pass it on, and on, and on. Read this. You won't be sorry.
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