See You When We Get There: Teaching for Change in Urban Schools

by Gregory Michie

Book Overview

Gregory Michie's first bestseller, Holler If You Hear Me, put him on the map as a compelling and passionate voice in urban education. In his new book, Michie turns his attention to young teachers of color, and once again provides readers with a unique and penetrating look inside public school classrooms. Featuring portraits of five young teachers (two African Americans, two Latinas, and one Asian American) who are "working for change," Michie...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807745197
• ISBN13: 9780807745199
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Teachers College Press
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

See you When You Get there Review

It's such a great book, I have to read it for class, but if it wasn't required to read, I would definitely read it on my own. I recommend this book.

Must-read for teachers in urban schools

I have been blessed with the privilege of taking a class/workshop with Michie and am just as invigorated by this book as his class. This book profiles the experiences, both good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate of teachers in urban schools. From the beginning, Michie acknowledges and addresses criticisms of his previous writings as well as discusses his intellectual struggle with the fact the he is/was a middle-class white man teaching poor, urban children of color. He also recognizes that this book is written from his perspective and therefore is filtered through his eyes rather than the teachers (though he tried to free it from his personal reflection as much as possible and just "show" these teachers in real world situations). His goal is not to profile five "good" or "star" teachers, just five real teachers struggling to teach for change, struggling to help their students change their lives and worlds. This book showed me that even "good" teachers (I think they're all good teachers in this book, but that's just me) screw up. Even good teachers have bad days. All urban teachers, particularly new teachers, especially ones who teach against the status-quo and push their students to think critically about everything they read about and learn about, sometimes fall. But they have moments of triumph as well. They have moments where students go above and beyond expectations, and moments where they see just how much these "ghetto" or "low-achieving" students know about their world. This book gave me hope and ignited a new fire in me. I hope it inspires you just as much.

Wonderful book for teachers and students

Michie is one of the few educators out there that consistently crafts his writing with such care, compassion, and insight. I really enjoyed reading this book. I think that as teachers we need to read our narratives and see them in a practical public forum, like Michie provides, instead of just an academic policy chart. Michie's writing is consistently reflectively and engaging. I highly recommend this book to anyone in the teaching profession, or the academic world.