Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I, too, was a New York City Teaching Fellow, and this book tells it like it is in America's urban schools.

If you are already a teacher, this book will reaffirm everything you already know about the ups and downs of this most challenging and rewarding job. When your friends and loved ones ask what you do every day, just give them this book to read.

If you are not a teacher, then you need to read this book to see what's really going on in our country's most troubled schools. It's all here -- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Abby Goodnough skillfully relates the events and emotions of Donna Moffett who decides to make a career change and become an elementary teacher in New York City. With only a few weeks of preparation, Donna is given a class of first graders from a neighborhood where crime and dysfunctional families are numerous. The book is, honest, inspiring, and avoids being sentimental while it provides a real look into one experience of why teaching is not an easy profession.

Whether you are a new teacher, or someone who has made a career change, or a veteran teacher I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy this book. It is written in a down to earth practical perspective. It was required reading for a grad course I am taking but I think it was great book! This book was in new condition when I received it.

I adored this book. From the poignant anecdotes about these scrappy, precious inner-city kids, to the searing psychological portrait of this flawed but well-intentioned secretary-turned-teacher, to the lip-curling analysis of the New York City educational system, this book really has it all. Surprisingly, this intelligent, topical read is also a juicy page-turner that you will not be able to put down!

The book,Ms. Moffett's First Year, Becoming A Teacher in America, was exactly as presented by seller. Title of the book is misleading, due to the fact, there was too much rhetoric in the beginning of the book about politics and finance in NYC school system.

This book, like most celebratory teacher writing, suffers from an overabundance of mushy anecdotes and 'tug at your heart strings' bathos.

Perhaps if the author had focused the spotlight (critically) on herself and, especially, on the dubious policies that placed her in this troubled 'inner-city' NYC public school, without so much as one day of classroom training, we as readers would have understood the importance of re-professionalizing teaching, and of taking it out of the hands of clueless politicians (Democrats and Republicans) and their flunky corporate managers.