A riveting story about the resiliency of Bronx high school students through the eyes of a passionate and dedicated teacher Rundown, vermin-infested buildings. rigid, slow-to-react bureaucratic systems. Children from broken homes and declining communities. How can a teacher succeed? How does a student not only survive but also come to thrive? It can happen, and As Bad as They Say? tells the heroic stories of Janet Mayer's students during her 33-year tenure as a Bronx high school teacher. In 1995, Janet Mayer's students began a pen-pal exchange with South African teenagers who, under apartheid, had been denied an education; almost uniformly, the South Africans asked, Is the Bronx as bad as they say? This dedicated teacher promised those students and all future ones that she would write a book to help change the stereotypical image of Bronx students and show that, in spite of overwhelming obstacles, they are outstanding young people, capable of the highest achievements. She walks the reader through the decrepit school building, describing in graphic detail the deplorable physical conditions that students and faculty navigate daily. Then, in eight chapters we meet eight amazing young people, a small sample of the more than 14,000 students the writer has felt honored to teach. She describes her own Bronx roots and the powerful influences that made her such a determined teacher. Finally, the veteran teacher sounds the alarm to stop the corruption and degradation of public education in the guise of what are euphemistically labeled "reforms" (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top). She also expresses optimism that public education and our democracy can still be saved, urgently calling on all to become involved and help save our schools.
Featuring a nice mix of real life humorous stories, spoof satirical material, and some just plain silly stuff. It's Free by way of an introduction to new comedy writer Paul's work. The author is influenced by UK comedian's Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine & Tony Hancock whilst retaining his own unique writing style! So if English humour is your thing worth a peep at.
The Enchiridion or Handbook of the first-century AD Stoic Epictetus was used as an ethical treatise both in Christian monasteries and by the sixth-century pagan Neoplatonist Simplicius. Simplicius chose it for beginners, rather than Aristotle's Ethics, because it presupposed no knowledge of logic. We thus get a fascinating chance to see how a pagan Neoplatonist transformed Stoic ideas. The text was relevant to Simplicius because he too, like Epictetus, was teaching beginners how to take the first steps towards eradicating emotion, although he is unlike Epictetus in thinking that they should give up public life rather than acquiesce, if public office is denied them. Simplicius starts from a Platonic definition of the person as rational soul, not body, ignoring Epictetus' further whittling down of himself to just his will or policy decisions. He selects certain topics for special attention in chapters 1, 8, 27 and 31. Things are up to us, despite Fate. Our sufferings are not evil, but providential attempts to turn us from the body. Evil is found only in the human soul. But evil is parasitic (Proclus' term) on good. The gods exist, are provident, and cannot be bought off.With nearly all of this the Stoics would agree, but for quite different reasons, and their own distinctions and definitions are to a large extent ignored. This translation of the Handbook is published in two volumes. This is the second volume, covering chapters 27-53; the first covers chapters 1-26.
Praised as “a work of wild, vaulting ambition and achievement” by Entertainment Weekly, Jamie O’Neill’s first novel invites comparison to such literary greats as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Charles Dickens. Set during the year preceding the Easter Uprising of 1916—Ireland’s brave but fractured revolt against British rule—At Swim, Two Boys is a tender, tragic love story and a brilliant depiction of people caught in the tide of history. Powerful and artful, and ten years in the writing, it is a masterwork from Jamie O’Neill. Jim Mack is a naïve young scholar and the son of a foolish, aspiring shopkeeper. Doyler Doyle is the rough-diamond son—revolutionary and blasphemous—of Mr. Mack’s old army pal. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of rock where gentlemen bathe in the nude, the two boys make a pact: Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, on Easter of 1916, they will swim to the distant beacon of Muglins Rock and claim that island for themselves. All the while Mr. Mack, who has grand plans for a corner shop empire, remains unaware of the depth of the boys’ burgeoning friendship and of the changing landscape of a nation.
Among the British troops bound for the Black Sea in May 1854 was a young officer in the 5th Dragoon Guards, Richard Temple Godman, who sent home throughout the entire Crimea campaign many detailed letters to his family at Park Hatch in Surrey. Temple Godman went out at the start of the war, took part in the successful Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaklava and in other engagements, and did not return to England until June 1856, after peace had been declared. He took three very individual horses and despite all his adventures brought them back unscathed. Godmans dispatches from the fields of war reveal his wide interests and varied experiences; they range from the pleasures of riding in a foreign landscape, smoking Turkish tobacco, and overcoming boredom by donning comic dress and hunting wild dogs, to the pain of seeing friends and horses die from battle, disease, deprivation and lack of medicines. He writes scathingly about the skein of rivalries between the Generals (a good many muffs among the chiefs), inaccurate and highly coloured newspaper reports and, while critical of medical inefficiency, regards women in hospitals as a sort of fanaticism. Yet at other times he will employ the pen of an artist in describing a scene, or wax eloquent on the idiosyncrasies of horses. He is altogether a most gallant and sensitive young cavalryman, and deservedly went on to achieve high rank after the war. Always fresh and easy to read, his letters provide an unrivalled picture of what it was really like to be in the Crimea.
The landmark novel of the Sixties – a powerful account of a woman searching for her personal, political and professional identity while facing rejection and betrayal.
America’s citizens want children to receive a high-quality education in clean, orderly and safe schools staffed with quality teachers, support staff and courageous educational leaders. In many communities, such a school experience is something the students will never have. Why? One or more members of the governing board desire to use their elected position for personal gain. They are Exploiters. Some desire to exploit a little. Others crave total domination of the school system and become the petty tyrants of education. Whether the exploitation is minimal or extreme, exploitative board members are highly detrimental to the effectiveness of the local school system. They destroy teamwork, morale, careers and many times entire school systems. They steal a high-quality education from children. The predominant governance structure of public education dictated by law is seriously flawed. What thousands of citizens and educators strongly desire for their schools can be discarded and replaced with the unscrupulous will of one individual. Exploitive school board members must be understood and stopped. The governance structure of public education must be changed.
Noted scholar Lois Weis first visited the town of "Freeway" in her 1990 book, Working Class Without Work. In that book we met the students and teachers of Freeway's high school to understand how these working-class folks made sense of their lives. Now, fifteen years later, Weis has gone back to Freeway for Class Reunion. This time her focus is on the now grown-up students who are, for the most part, still working class and now struggling to survive the challenges of the global economy. Class Reunion is a rare and valuable longitudinal ethnographic study that provides powerful, provocative insight into how the lives of these men and women have changed over the last two decades--and what their prospects might be for the future.
Thomas Cartwright was the leader of the Elizabethan Puritans and his intellectual pre-eminence was widely acknowledged. Standard-bearer of the Prebytero-Puritans against Whitgift, he was held to have vanquished his powerful adversary by the publication of his Rest of the Second Replie (1557) Cartwrightiana is the first of 2 volumes giving authoritative editions of the works of the early Elizabethan Puritans - Cartwright, Browne and Harrison. It contains among others: accounts of Cartwright's examination before the Commissioners in 1590, Resolution of Doubts about entering the Ministry, several of his letters, A Short Catechism (1579), The Holy Exercise of a True Fast (1580) and a Preface to an Hospital for the Diseased 1959