Customer Reviews

Apple On An Empty Desk: Nine Reasons Why One Teacher Left the Building

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I believe that Ms. Smith-Traywick's book is a must read for all public school teachers and administrators. She very eloquently details her experiences teaching in a public school setting, calling attention to the negativity that she dealt with among her peers as well as her experiences with administrators who failed to hold teachers accountable. Bravo to Ms. Smith-Traywick for facing this growing problem head on and calling attention to it.

Having taught in a public high scool classroom for thirty years, I must say that although she makes several valid points, Traywick-Smith's work never addresses the real problems with our public education system - especially at the high school level where she focuses her attention: lazy, unprepared and unmotivated students and the dysfunctional families that made them that way. Nor does she deal with the nonsensical, faddish reforms and the spineless administrators who attempt to implement them. But where her book loses all credibility is at the point where she defends the ridiculous "No Child Left Behind Act."

Throughout the book, the author very clearly delineates how she ostracized herself from each faculty she worked with but then throws herself a pity party and explains how she was victimized as a "have-not." What she has not is a clue! This woman claims to have spent up to sixteen hours a day working in her classroom, including weekends and overnighters, and then expects her readers to take her seriously.

All in all, this book is a sad lament to one teacher's failed career, not an objective, experiential critique of public education. If that is what you seek, order Debra Craig's "Welcome to my Classroom, Nightmare."