By Simon McDonald, Editorial Manager | simon@thereadingroom.com
These 10 books are inspiring must-reads for teachers looking to recharge their batteries and remind themselves of the important role they play in the lives of their students.
Maybe it was a grandparent or a teacher or a colleague; someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly 20 years ago.
In this Roald Dahl classic, readers are introduced to two very different teachers; the lovely Miss Jennifer Honey, who is astonished by Matilda’s intellectual abilities and tries to move her into a higher class, and the mean Miss Agatha Trunchbull.
When Miss Barrett arrives at Calvin Coolidge High, fresh from earning literature degrees at Hunter College, she can hardly wait to shape young minds. Instead, she encounters broken windows, no supplies, students who would rather be anyplace else, and a stifling bureaucracy that makes her job more difficult at every turn.
With opportunities for black men limited in post–World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot and Cambridge-educated engineer, accepts a teaching position that puts him in charge of a class of angry, unmotivated, bigoted white teenagers whom the system has mostly abandoned.
Young English schoolmaster Mr. Chipping came to teach at Brookfield in 1870. Nicknamed “Mr. Chips,” this gentle and caring man helped shape the lives of generation after generation of boys.
Todd Anderson and his friends at Welton Academy can hardly believe how different life is since their new English professor, the flamboyant John Keating, has challenged them to “make your lives extraordinary!
For Anna Taggert, an earnest Ivy League graduate, pursuing her passion as a teacher means engaging young hearts and minds. She longs to be in a place where she can be her best self and give that best to her students. Turns out, it isn’t that easy.
Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master.
Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new — new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her idiosyncratic father. Grappling awkwardly with her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work.
A professor trying to finish his novel is distracted by his affair with the dean’s wife, a boarding student who tries to seduce him, another troubled but promising student, and his visiting editor.