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| The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle | 
| Author: Dan Brown
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $13.50
You Save: $12.45 (48%)
New (24) from $13.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 82497
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 1559708352
Dewey Decimal Number: 371.10092
EAN: 9781559708357
ASIN: 1559708352
Publication Date: August 20, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: H20080613234837T
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Product Description
At 22, Dan Brown came to the Bronx's P.S. 85 as an eager,fresh-faced teacher. Unbeknownst to him, his assigned class, 4-217, was thedesignated "dumping ground" for all fourth-grade problem cases, and hisstudents would prove to be more challenging than he could ever anticipate.Intent on being a caring, dedicated teacher but confronted with unrulychildren, absent parents, and a failing administration, Dan was pushed tothe limit time and again: he found himself screaming with rage, punchinghis fist through a blackboard out of sheer frustration, often just wantingto give up and walk away. Yet in this seeming chaos, he slowly learnedfrom his own mistakes and discovered an unexpected well of inspiration todiscipline and teach and make a difference.The Great ExpectationsSchool is the touching journey of Class 4-217 and their teacher, Mr.Brown, but more than that, it is the revealing story of a brokeneducational system and all those struggling within and fighting against it.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Singing in the Rain June 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
You gotta sing as you kick them, that's the message of the 20th century. The low expectations of the "Great Expectations School" stand out, but the author persuades us that all is not lost. This author goes a long way toward adding some realism back into the great fantasy known as "all children can learn." When you stop laughing at that, let the author's humor take you even further into the nightmare of public education. Wit is one of the first things to go when you enter this profession. Brown's possession of it is the first sign that this guy wasn't born to be a teacher but rather an observer and commentator. So be it, his astute observations bring out the best and the worst of finest prison system known to man, the New York Public Schools.
 BEWARE!!!!!!! January 24, 2008
3 out of 16 found this review helpful
Beware this is not Dan Brown the auther of "The Da Vinci Code". Different people!!!!!!!!!
 Even the worst situation is not without hope January 15, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Dan Brown surpasses the similarly named charlatan by the second page of this tender recollection, so enough conversation about how one is not the other, eh? Anyone comparing the two (myself included) is drawing a tenuous, superficial connection. Simply put, it would be a discredit to this Mr. Brown to be associated with that one.
The Great Expectations School is a story from the intersection of reality and idealism. Mr. Brown acts as interlocutor between an impoverished section of society and those too caught up in disbelief or willful refusal to recognize it. Harsh conditions are much easier to stomach when they are limited to 30 seconds on the news.
Mr. Brown is brave to harrow the experience that he reports, but the more courageous act by far is to then report on it, in all of its bleak grandeur. This reader is very thankful that he did.
Telling it like it is November 17, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a second year New York City Teaching Fellow, I can attest that the stories Dan tells in this book are still stories that we as teachers face every day. From the students living in shelters and floating from address to address to the micro-management of such things as bulletin boards, it's all very much the world in which I live. The book is heartbreaking in its realism ~ but it gives me hope to know that I am not alone.
I definitely second the motion that this become required reading for anyone entering aternative certification programs. It's less Pollyanna-ish than "Ms. Moffett's First Year" which, while somewhat realistic, doesn't really get to the heart of the matter, and more realistic than "Educating Esme", which, unless you ARE Esme, really isn't realistic at all. While I wouldn't change my path into teaching, I wish I'd had someone really tell it like it is before I started as Dan has done here.
Richard Dadier Or Just Another Krazy Kozol In The Making? September 6, 2007
6 out of 24 found this review helpful
While it is laudable that Dan Brown chose a particularly challenging forum for his debut teaching job, he appears much too susceptible to the influences of his tag team book tour partner, Jonathan Kozol.
The character Richard Dadier, as played by Glenn Ford, in the 1955 film "The Blackboard Jungle," was no proponent of the Kozol educational ideology. While Dadier believed in discipline and order in the classroom, Kozol prefers recalcitrance and anarchy. Kozol is of the impression that education must not be politically neutral. Guess which political ideology he prefers? Considering he wrote "On Being A Teacher," after his return from Cuba, the answer is self evident.
Let's hope that Mr. Brown stays true to his own ideals and does not embrace the radicalism of Kozol, at least not while he has a captive audience in a public school classroom. It is one thing to act the martyr in a low-paying, essentially thankless job as an inner city teacher, expecting the students to follow you to the stake is counter productive. To paraphrase Kozol, there is nothing worse then soporific socialism to "deaden children's souls."
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