I have been blessed with the privilege of taking a class/workshop with Michie and am just as invigorated by this book as his class. This book profiles the experiences, both good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate of teachers in urban schools. From the beginning, Michie acknowledges and addresses criticisms of his previous writings as well as discusses his intellectual struggle with the fact the he is/was a middle-class white man teaching poor, urban children of color. He also recognizes that this book is written from his perspective and therefore is filtered through his eyes rather than the teachers (though he tried to free it from his personal reflection as much as possible and just "show" these teachers in real world situations). His goal is not to profile five "good" or "star" teachers, just five real teachers struggling to teach for change, struggling to help their students change their lives and worlds.
This book showed me that even "good" teachers (I think they're all good teachers in this book, but that's just me) screw up. Even good teachers have bad days. All urban teachers, particularly new teachers, especially ones who teach against the status-quo and push their students to think critically about everything they read about and learn about, sometimes fall. But they have moments of triumph as well. They have moments where students go above and beyond expectations, and moments where they see just how much these "ghetto" or "low-achieving" students know about their world.
This book gave me hope and ignited a new fire in me. I hope it inspires you just as much.

I have been blessed with the privilege of taking a class/workshop with Michie and am just as invigorated by this book as his class. This book profiles the experiences, both good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate of teachers in urban schools. From the beginning, Michie acknowledges and addresses criticisms of his previous writings as well as discusses his intellectual struggle with the fact the he is/was a middle-class white man teaching poor, urban children of color. He also recognizes that this book is written from his perspective and therefore is filtered through his eyes rather than the teachers (though he tried to free it from his personal reflection as much as possible and just "show" these teachers in real world situations). His goal is not to profile five "good" or "star" teachers, just five real teachers struggling to teach for change, struggling to help their students change their lives and worlds.
This book showed me that even "good" teachers (I think they're all good teachers in this book, but that's just me) screw up. Even good teachers have bad days. All urban teachers, particularly new teachers, especially ones who teach against the status-quo and push their students to think critically about everything they read about and learn about, sometimes fall. But they have moments of triumph as well. They have moments where students go above and beyond expectations, and moments where they see just how much these "ghetto" or "low-achieving" students know about their world.
This book gave me hope and ignited a new fire in me. I hope it inspires you just as much.