Tracy Kidder -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine and the extraordinary national bestseller House -- spent nine months in Mrs. Zajac's fifth-grade classroom in the depressed "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts. For an entire year he lived among twenty schoolchildren and their indomitable, compassionate teacher -- sharings their joys, their catastrophes, and their small but essential triumphs. As a result, he has written a revealing, remarkably poignant account of education in America . . . and his most memorable, emotionally charged, and important book to date.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Teachers don't have to be saints.
Comment: Chris Zajac really angered me. If her methods weren't working, why didn't she try new ones? I don't find her very intelligent. Why did she wait so long to talk to Robert's mother or file a report about his pysically abusing himself? She wasn't angered enough or frustrated enough to do so since a look subdued him and because he wasn't hurting anybody else, only himself.

She'd rather keep Clarence from getting the appropriate help for him in order to make herself feel like she's helping him. She gets off on helping. The quiet kids who don't demand her attention in a negative way are neglected. Thanks to Al, the principal, not her, Clarence got the help he needed. Al was the one who called for the evalulation of Clarence, although not with the intention to help Clarence, but to protect the school if the kid were to commit a crime with the consequence of the authorities coming to ask for records.

Surprisingly she saw that the Science Fair is unfair. Why doesn't she consider helping the kids during school? They seem to like working on projects and even doing the research. Also surprising is that she hasn't figured out that the homework battle she will never win. If the parents aren't going to help with science fair they are not going to help with homework. I never did homework until 7th grade. I got C's and D's. My mother meant well by believing that school was school and home was home. (Now I have a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquistion and Teaching. I teach 5th grade.)

Chris Zajac defines an dversarial relationship with her students. As I read over and over again how she put her face so close o the kids' who weren't doing their work or who were misbehaving, I expected a kid to spit at her or bite her. That's what she made me feel like doing.

Good teachers dont have to be work- and worry-a-holics who bring their work and troubles home. They need to be creative enough to solve the children's problems.

To defend the saintly Chris a little, she should have more support from the administration. There need to be proceedures for the problems in her class. Collegues need to observe each other's classes. The administration has to provide the teachers the methods and resources to be more creative problem solvers in the classroom.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Teacher's Courage
Comment: Although most people have attended school for years or still do so now, not very many people understand what it is like to be a teacher. Among Schoolchildren is the story of a teacher, Mrs. Christine Zajac, and her fifth grade class. It clearly and accurately displays what the school year is like for a teacher. It tells us of Mrs. Zajac's thoughts and the joys and challenges that she encounters while teaching. The amount of effort she puts into teaching is amazing. Even when she is not at school she is thinking about "her children." One example of her dedication is when Mrs. Zajac is grading social studies tests late into the night. She evaluates each child after grading his or her test and plans what she needs to do next. She loves all of the children despite their faults. Mrs. Zajac picks out the good in each student. She even sees the soft side of a troublemaker, Clarence, when she reads the admirable writing he does in class.
Although Among Schoolchildren is nonfiction, much of the book, especially the parts that take place in the classroom, reads more like a novel. This book follows Mrs. Zajac and her class for a year, and also includes background information that makes the book more interesting and understandable. In between the sections about teaching, there are descriptions of what the community is like and stories about Mrs. Zajac's childhood and life outside of school. The author, Tracy Kidder (House, The Soul of a New Machine), has once again written an outstanding book. Among Schoolchildren won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1989. The award, according to the Robert F. Kennedy memorial website, "celebrates the book which most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes, his concern for the poor and the powerless...[and] his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance."
Among Schoolchildren includes some similar themes and values as To Kill a Mockingbird. Characters in both books demonstrate courage. In To Kill a Mockingbird, a lawyer, Atticus Finch, defines courage as "when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do." Atticus demonstrates courage when he takes on the case where a black man is accused of raping a white woman and will be tried before a white jury in the 1930s. Atticus knows he has almost no chance of getting the black man acquitted, but he chooses to defend the man anyway. In Among Schoolchildren, Mrs. Zajac also demonstrates courage. She teaches in a poor school district where many of the children live in rough conditions. She knows that many of them will not take advantage of the education she is trying to give them and that there is not a lot of parental support for the children. Many of them probably will not be successful later in life, but even knowing this, she educates the children to the best of her ability, hoping that some of them will retain the values and basic knowledge she has taught them.
This book is a great read for anyone in high school and older, especially someone who is thinking about becoming a teacher. Among Schoolchildren shows the importance of education and how difficult it is to teach some kids. This book also reveals how hard life is for some children and how little support they have from home. Most of these poor children don't show a lot of interest in school or don't want to work hard, but Mrs. Zajac does her best to instill curiosity in them and make learning fun.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Among School Children Says It Like It Is!
Comment: I am using this book with my community college students who plan to be teachers. I have taught in public schools at the elementary, middle, and college level and I wish someone had suggested that I read this book long ago. Tracy Kidder really gets inside Mrs. Zajac's thoughts and feelings about the challenges elementary school teachers face every day in their classrooms. This gives a very realistic view of the profession for people who plan to become teachers!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: What "teacher" means
Comment: This book has been an incredible relief for me to read. In the midst of my master's training in education (for a career change), I have been bogged down in the textbook version of a classroom--which is hard to translate into a real classroom. This book made me more aware--and consequently, less scared--of the plight of the teacher. Kidder puts you right into the life of Chris Zajac, and allows you to see how a "good" teacher deals with the realities of teaching.

With so much focus on "improving" education through standardized testing, it is enlightening to observe the inner workings of a teacher working in the real world, confronting the real issues of humanity that are uniquely bequested to teachers.

A great book that gives you real respect for the profession.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: You Gotta Have Heart
Comment: Tracy Kidder captures the angst and the anger of the classroom in his book, "Among Schoolchildren," about the teaching-life of Mrs. Chris Zajac. Certainly those who criticize the public schools must read this book before they give up on schools and opt for vouchers for all.

Mrs. Zajac has all the necessary qualities of a good teacher:
1. She's empathetic, almost to a fault. I know she gives too many second chances to kids who try to disrupt her class, but she also got through to them all, even the ones who had to be removed.
2. She's hard-working. She always brings home both the paper grading and the worry. It's hard to leave teacher feelings at the school door. Most teachers take them home as does Mrs. Zajac. Many of her great ideas develop while she broods at home over some kid's plight.
3. She has a big heart, enough to mourn for kids who have their own hardships at home, enough to get angry at these same kids when they need it.

Tracy Kidder's book captures all of it. Highly recommended to college education majors and to veteran teachers who need a jump start to recall why they got into teaching in the first place.

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