Ms. Moffett's First Year: Becoming a Teacher in America [Paperback]

Abby Goodnough (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2006

In summer of 2000, legal secretary Donna Moffett answered an ad for the New York City Teaching Fellows program, which sought to recruit "talented professionals" from other fields to teach in some of the city's worst schools. Seven weeks later she was in a first grade classroom in Flatbush, Brooklyn, nearly completely unprepared for what she was about to face.

New York Times education reporter Abby Goodnough followed Donna Moffett through her first year as a teacher, writing a frontpage, award-winning series that galvanized discussion nationwide. Now she has expanded that series into a book that, through the riveting story of Moffett's experiences, explores the gulf between the rhetoric of education reform and the realities of the public school classroom. Ms. Moffett's First Year is neither a Hollywood- friendly tale of ‘one person making a difference,' nor a reductive indictment of the public education system. It is rather a provocative portrait of the inadequacy of good intentions, of the challenges of educating poor and immigrant populations, and of a well-meaning but underprepared woman becoming a teacher the hard way.

While the story takes place in New York, Ms.Moffett's first year is a metaphor for the experiences of teachers everywhere in America, one that illuminates the philosophical, economic, political, and ideological dilemmas that have come more and more to determine their experience —and their students' experiences — in the classroom.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When schools chancellor Harold Levy challenged his fellow New Yorkers to "Take [their] next business trip on a big yellow bus" by becoming teachers in the public schools, Donna Moffett, a hardworking legal secretary looking for a way to make a difference, was one of the first to sign on. This unforgettable account of her first year as a first-grade teacher in an underperforming Brooklyn school brings Moffett, her students and her struggles to life. Goodnough's even-handed examination reaches beyond Room 218 in Flatbush's P.S. 92, however: some of the book's most striking pages cover the inspired but hasty inception of the New York City Teaching Fellows program, designed in the spring of 2000 to recruit professionals from other careers to work in the city's most troubled schools. After intense but unavoidably inadequate training in that program, Moffett is given her own classroom full of frustrating, endearing six-year-olds—sullen Curtis, unresponsive Melissa—and charged with teaching them to read, do math and simply behave. With a keen journalist's eye, Goodnough, a former New York Times education reporter who originally wrote about Moffett for the Metro section (she's now the paper's Miami bureau chief), follows Moffett as she copes with difficult students, ineffective standardized curricula, passive parents, a resentful administration and a host of other problems. This is no Dangerous Minds: the story Goodnough tells is far too complicated for a happy ending, though Moffett does experience success. Rather, it stands as a vital portrait of a dedicated, imperfect woman struggling in an inefficient and underfunded system.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"It's a fascinating look at... New York's - and America's - educational system." -- MSNBC Books Editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, 9/27/2004

"Ms Moffett's First Year is a look at the reality of life as a teacher." -- The Oregonian, September 5, 2004

"This is an honest look at the pitfalls of teaching..." -- Providence Journal, September 12, 2004

"a gripping account of teaching in Brooklyn." -- NYC Inside School

"an excellent book... there is no denying [Moffett's] bravery and fortitude." -- Washington Post, September 19, 2004

"unforgettable ... a vital portrait of a dedicated, imperfect woman struggling in an inefficient and underfunded system." -- Publishers Weekly, August 9, 2004 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (February 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586483803
• ISBN-13: 978-1586483807
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #91,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly accurate portrait of NYC's schools, October 24, 2004

By 

M. B. Rossetti "Bookworm" (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ms. Moffett's First Year: Becoming a Teacher in America (Hardcover)

I was eager to read this book, as Goodnough's NY Times series on the Teaching Fellows provided the impetus for my own leap into the program. I began teaching in Fall 2003 and can say that this book is amazingly accurate. While there have been a number of program changes (noted in the epilogue) the essential experience remains the same - the daily, even sometimes hourly, ups and downs of being a first year teacher with so little training is described in such exquisite detail that the book is, somewhat surprisingly, a page-turner.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I was really disappointed, August 8, 2005

By 

Former new teacher (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ms. Moffett's First Year: Becoming a Teacher in America (Hardcover)

I was a new teacher in a difficult Baltimore school, and this book was very unrealistic and only scratched the surface of the problem. Ms. Moffett is an angel and to be admired, but the author Abby Goodnough Hollywood-izes her experience and really waters down the problems in inner city schools.

I felt the author didn't really understand the experience of new teachers. She doesn't get into the student's lives at all. She doesn't seem to be upset or outraged by the terrible treatment of Ms. Moffett by the administration. And-- at the end-- she glosses over the fact that most of Ms. Moffett's colleagues leave the profession within a couple of years, meaning that hundreds of students still won't have teachers. This is deeply unfair to the students, but this book skims right over that injustice.

This book is a simple, nice read, but it was not hardhitting enough and it gives no concrete advice or guidance to new teachers.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A realistic look at the challenges of teaching., May 11, 2005

By 

silversurf (Planet of Paint) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Ms. Moffett's First Year: Becoming a Teacher in America (Hardcover)

This book is written in a breezy, popular style that kept me turning pages right to the end. However, the content is serious, and should be of interest to parents, prospective teachers, and to anyone who cares about children. The book is partly the story of one woman's initiation into the challenging work of teaching in a troubled city school. It is also a book about the politics of education. The author does a good job of explaining the many and varied political forces at work within the world of public schools. I think this book is a fair-minded and very readable introduction to a very complex subject.