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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: $5.95
You Save: $20.00 (77%)
New (27) from $5.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 262187
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: New in dj.
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| Customer Reviews:
 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."
More than expected August 23, 2007
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Dan Brown has written a book that can tear at your heart and yet still show humor. Having been a teacher myself, it is marvelous to read a book that really shows the inner workings of public education in today's society. There is a great sense of warmth, caring, honesty and wit. This should be a must read for every prospective teacher and anyone else involved with education. This book says it all.
A sobering look at the current state of public education in America August 13, 2007
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
At times heart-wrenching and then laugh out loud funny, The Great Expectations School is a sobering look at the current state of public education in America. Brown offers a unique and personalized glimpse into the daily struggle of elementary school with undauntedly heroic teachers, tragic students, and conniving administrators. I recommend this book to anyone who values education and wants to change the system. I also recommend it to those who don't; you will care by the end of the book.
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