day 212

I read this book on the recommendation of my friend Ashley - let's just say I owe her big time. I loved every second of this book and had trouble putting it down. It made me laugh out loud and cry all within the same 2 or 3 pages. I put a post-it note on any page where Esme made a great suggestion for my future classroom or whenever something she said really made me think. I almost ran out of post-it's by the time I was finished! You should definitely read this book!

Here's an excerpt from the last page, as Esme is watching her students graduate:

"People snicker, 'Those who can't do, teach.' But, oh, how right they are. I could never, ever do all I dream of doing. I could never, ever be an opera star, a baseball umpire, an earth scientist, an astronaut, a great lover, a great liar, a trapesze artisit, a dancer, a baker, a buddha, or a thousand other aspirations I have had, while having only been given one thin ticket in this lottery of life! In the recessional, as I watch them, mine, the ones I loved, I overflow with the joyous greed of a rich man counting coins. Wrongly I have thought teaching has lessened me at times, but now I experience a teacher's great euphoria, the knowledge like a drug that will keep me: thirty-one children. Thirty-one chances. Thirty-one futures, our futures."