Showing results by author "Esme Codell" in All Categories

This is the diary of Esme Raji Codell, a first-year teacher at a Chicago public school. Codell describes the frustrations - incompetent administrators, abusive parents, gang members and, at times, her own insecurities - she encountered when she began her teaching career in this inner-city school and the unique ways she approached them. As Codell puts it, she has "Thirty-one children. Thirty-one chances. Thirty-one futures, our futures. Everything they become, I also become."

Esmé tells us about the night she and her mother became "egg vigilantes" against an illegally parked car; her freewheeling first school, where kids sat on sofas instead of at desks and could choose disco dancing instead of math; her dangerous neighborhood, which her father made seem friendly...

Hunky Dory's mother always told her, “You'll be the wickedest witch wherever the four winds blow." And why not? She's at the top of her class in charm school. She can make flowers wilt like wet spaghetti. And she can turn any prince into a frog–but she always changes him back. That's when...

There are two files on Sahara Jones. The one the school counselor keeps is evidence that she's a fifth grader who needs special education. The other is the book Sahara is secretly writing, her Heart-Wrenching Life Story and Amazing Adventures. The latest chapter in her book unfolds when her...