Getting Schooled

"Getting Schooled" is a humorous, insightful, occasionally irreverent, and blatantly honest memoir of Joel Edmund Anderson's life and career as a high school teacher. Beginning with his first foray into the field of education as a shy and terrified student teacher in a Conception Junction, Missouri, and continuing through the trials and tribulations as a substitute teacher in the suburbs of Chicago, a TOEFL teacher in the Peace Corps, and a full-time teacher at various schools in California, Arkansas, and Alabama, Anderson reflects on the day-to-day chaotic roller-coaster ride of a life of a teacher. With chapter titles such as, "It's a Hard Knock Life!" "There's Blood in the Water...I Think It's Mine!" "The Faculty: Staff...Infections and Meetings," and "Classroom Antics: Vibrating Pants, Rancid Gas, and Conch Shells," Anderson not only relates the real life daily triumphs and tragedies of teaching high school and navigating the education system, but he reminds teachers why they are in education in the first place and encourages them to learn from those quirky and unscripted experiences of the classroom. As Anderson says in his book, teaching is an improvisational art form, so realize that often it is the unscripted moments in life that teach us the most about life. Veteran teachers will be able to laugh along with Anderson's confessions of the the occasional chaos that broke out in his classroom and his struggles and joys as he learned to become a better teacher. Beginning teachers will be given a glimpse into what kind of career they are getting into as well. As the title says, "Getting Schooled" is all about the lessons teachers learn as they attempt to plan out their careers and live their lives.