Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year

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A should-read for parents, new teachers, and classroom veterans, Educating Esmé is the exuberant diary of Esmé Raji Codell’s first year teaching in a Chicago public school. Fresh-mouthed and free-spirited, the irrepressible Madame Esmé-as she prefers to be called-does the cha-cha all over multiplication tables, roller-skates down the hallways, and puts on rousing performances with at-risk students in the library. Her diary opens a window into a real-life classroom from a teacher’s perspective. At the same time as battling bureaucrats, gang members, abusive parents, and her own insecurities, this gifted young woman reveals what it takes to be an exceptional teacher. Heroine to thousands of parents and educators, Esmé now shares more of her ingenious and yet down-to-earth approaches to the classroom in a supplementary guide to help new teachers hit the ground running. As relevant and iconoclastic as when it used to be first published, Educating Esmé is a classic, as is Madame Esmé herself.
Esmé Raji Codell has written a funny, hip diary filled with one-liners and unadorned thoughts that speak volumes about the raw, emotional life of a first-year teacher. Like Ally McBeal in the classroom, the miniskirted and idealistic Codell once in a while fantasizes her career is a musical. Her inner-city Chicago elementary school fades to black as the lunch lady strikes an arabesque or a struggling student performs the dance of the dying swan, all set to her interior soundtrack. (Tina Turner’s “Funkier Than a Mosquita’s Tweeter” echoes whenever her idea-stealing, dimwitted principal harangues her.) She’s a rash, petite, white lady who roller-skates through the halls and insists that her fifth-graders call her “Madame Esmé.” But it is not all fun and games: she introduces us to children who fling their desks and apologize in tears, and at one point, after reporting a disruptive student to her mother, who therefore thrashes the young girl, she dry heaves into her classroom’s trash can.

Codell’s 24-year-old voice is loud and clear (“Serious gross out,” she writes after the scorned principal hugs her), though, on the principle that kids say the darnedest things, she frequently simply repeats their comments for comic effect. She’s got sass, maybe too much self-confidence at times, and though there is no deep introspection in Educating Esmé, you can be convinced her 10-year-old charges emerge the better for knowing her. –Jodi Mailander Farrell

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