Daddy Mojo reads The Great Expectations School by Dan Brown

I enjoy watching zombie movies.  There’s a sense of dread that hangs in the air.  You want to yell out to the characters not to do something or to run anyplace other than where they are now.  In a way I enjoyed reading The Great Expectations School, a Rookie year in the New Blackboard Jungle for some of those same reasons.

In 2003 Dan Brown joined the New York Teaching Fellows, it was a program that allowed college graduates to get their teaching credentials much quicker than normal.  Applicants to this program, if accepted would have to teach in an urban school that usually had difficulty in retaining teachers.

Mr. Brown was accepted at a school in the Bronx and the book takes you through each month of the 2003 school year.  In August when he looks over the notes for his students he’s taken back some of the descriptions.  “Very disrespectful”, is one of the kinder terms that the previous teacher has noted down for a student.

He shared the student notes with a veteran teacher at the school.  “I have no idea why they always do that to first-year teachers, I’m so sorry”, is what she said.  Cue the zombie apocalypse in 3, 2, 1.  From that introduction it’s a constant struggle of a teacher who wants to make a difference, bureaucratic teachers, absent parents, classroom violence, wasted youth and the occasional bright student.

Every day brings another problem for his class or students.  It’s an atmosphere that is antithetical towards learning, but is all that they have.  The narrative in the book is direct, honest and painfully real.  It’s the day to day story of a new teacher at a bad school where he has to alternately deal with burned out teachers or chronically disruptive students.  From the book you can almost smell the sense of dread that’s constantly in the hallways of the school.

The Great Expectations School is a book that’s tough to put down.  The book is a realistic look at what he encountered that year teaching.  There are silver linings to the story, but the book spends most of the time dealing with the work of a teacher and what they encounter.

As an ex teacher I understand the desire to teach and make a difference.  Having said that, I taught in Japan, where the parents are more involved in their children’s school and the pupils are there to learn.   I could never teach in the U.S. and I readily admit that.

You don’t have to work in education to enjoy reading The Great Expectations.  Enjoy is an odd word to describe the book.  The Great Expectations School is not a total downer, but the vast majority of the book deals with the real frustrations a teacher experiences.

At times the book is like a train wreck or a good zombie movie.   The difference is in this case its real life and being played out in schools around the country.

Daddy Mojo Reads is a review series on books.  Sometimes it’ll be a children’s book and other times it will be a popular fiction or non-fiction book.  I’m not scared to stop a book halfway through if it’s losing me or just isn’t interesting-life is too short to waste on a bad book.  In this case we did receive a promotional copy of the book.