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    Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids
    Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids
    Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids
    Audiobook22 hours

    Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

    Written by Nicholson Baker

    Narrated by Tom Zingarelli

    2.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprinting sessions, Nicholson Baker became an on-call substitute teacher in a Maine public school district. He awoke to the dispatcher's five-forty a.m. phone call and headed to one of several nearby schools; when he got there, he did his best to follow lesson plans and help his students get something done. What emerges from Baker's experience is a complex, often touching deconstruction of public schooling in America: children swamped with overdue assignments, overwhelmed by the marvels and distractions of social media and educational technology, and staff who weary themselves trying to teach in step with an often outmoded or overly ambitious standard curriculum. In Baker's hands, the inner life of the classroom is examined anew as the author and his pupils struggle to find ways to get through the day. Baker is one of the most inventive and remarkable writers of our time, and Substitute, filled with humor, honesty, and empathy, may be his most impressive work of nonfiction yet.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9781515978725
    Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids
    Author

    Nicholson Baker

    Nicholson Baker is the author of nine novels and four works of nonfiction, including Double Fold, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and House of Holes, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in Maine with his family.

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    Reviews for Substitute

    2.5/5

    19 ratings2 reviews

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    • 1/5
      As a certified teacher I have been substitute teaching for a few years trying to find a full-time position, so I am quite familiar with the joys and sorrows associated with this position. However, I decided to read this book with the hope that perhaps the author would provide me with some tips or insights into the wild world of substitute teaching. Sadly, that was not what this book was about. Instead it was a mind-numbing look at 28 days of substitute teaching done by the author who is not a teacher, but a writer looking for his next book. What surprised me most was that the school district allowed him to tape his classes, (the transcription of the dialogues between him, other staff and students is too precise for any other method to be used). It is obvious that the author does not have a high opinion of our system of education, instead preferring to chat with students about a variety of topics, many of which are not in his lesson plans. He also did not appear to have strong classroom management skills and often became frustrated by the noise levels in many of his classes. This is a very long book filled with minute-by-minute accounts of his days as a substitute teacher with no real sharing of insights. I kept hoping it would get better, but it never did.
    • 3/5
      “I again wondered if I’d managed to teach anything useful that day,” says it all. Nicholson Baker describes his entrance into substitute teaching and his first twenty-eight days on the job. To qualify he had to complete four nights of an adult education class, complete an application, provide letters of recommendation, transcripts, get fingerprinted and pass a criminal background check. Other than knowing where the schools are located, the two more important items covered were emergency lockdown procedures and iPads usage. Unfortunately, conditions did not improve as he bounced from one class to another. He followed limited lessons plans, took attendance, and herded students from one area to another. The book makes a strong case the when the regular teacher is absent, the quality of instruction provided takes a nosedive into an illiteracy cesspool with the miniscule possibility of self-restraint and control as students take advantage and the substitute loses patience. The other lessons is the over reliance on technology rather and deductive reasoning to complete schoolwork.