Ten books that portray educators with nuance

Sarah Beddow is a poet, essayist, and mother. She is the author of the memoir-in-poems Dispatches from Frontier Schools and the chapbook What's pink & shiny/what's dark & hard. Her poems and essays have appeared in Bone Bouquet, Birdcoat Quarterly, Rogue Agent, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere, and she is on the board of Awesome Pittsburgh, which grants money — cold hard cash with no strings attached - to fund awesome projects in the Pittsburgh area.

At Electric Lit Beddow tagged ten books that "portray educators with nuance, demystifying the job and demonstrating that it is a deeply human endeavor." One title on the list:

Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes by Kathleen West

From the emotional-support Nalgene bottle and handouts hot from the photocopier to the student who knocks on the door the moment a teacher settles in to get her grading done, Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes nails the details of teachers’ daily lives. I was hardly surprised to learn that author Kathleen West is a veteran teacher. The novel tells the story of how Isobel Johnson, an English teacher with a social justice mission, and Julia Abbott, a theatre mom who simply cannot keep her nose out of her kid’s life, both find themselves targets in the gossipy, politicking world of a high-achieving, suburban school district. Both Isobel and Julia make mistakes—some of them quite disastrous—but the story makes clear that their aim is always what is best for the kids.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes.

--Marshal Zeringue