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Dan Brown, a first-year 4th grade teacher in The Bronx’s Public School 85, has written an honest, heart-wrenching, sometimes humorous account of his experiences in the classroom. He takes us through a year-long journey as he shares his excitement at following in the footsteps of his mom, a former teacher. He shares an insider’s view of  the lives of his young charges, who live in “the very bottom of the economic barrel in America.” Brown, says reviewer Laurie Wasserman, honestly portrays both his own shortcomings and the lack of meaningful support from administrators.

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The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle
By Dan Brown
2007 (paperback/?? pp.)
Arcade Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-55970-885-2
$13.99

Reviewed by Laurie Wasserman, LD/NBCT
Medford, Massachusetts

Dan Brown, who became a first-year 4th grade teacher in The Bronx’s Public School 85 in 2000, has written an honest, heart-wrenching, sometimes humorous account of his experiences in the classroom. He takes us through a year-long journey as he shares his excitement at following in the footsteps of his mom, a former teacher. He shares an insider’s view of  the lives of his young charges, who live in “the very bottom of the economic barrel in America.”

The book starts out as an “easy read,” as Brown shares his stories after completing the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and making the decision to become a teacher in the summer of 2000. Soon, however, he has engaged readers in all the behind-the-scenes events in his new teaching life -- from how he became one of 2400 New York City first-year Teaching Fellows and on into his first classroom. On the first day, he realizes that his students have many educational and social issues that will be challenging for him, making his job as an educator overwhelming, frustrating and almost professionally impossible. He doesn’t ask for our pity, simply our understanding of all the difficulties he faces as a first year teacher.

He honestly portrays the unavailable administrator, who readily criticizes his bulletin boards (“That border is company made. It’s distracting. Take it all down or turn it over. We’re not a company. We’re a school.”). The administrator is also frank about Brown’s lack of classroom management skills (“Your classroom is your resume, Mr. Brown. I personally hired you, so I have a special interest in making sure that fine work is displayed. You have the teaching gene, but it’s not worth a thing if you can’t maintain the professional responsibilities that go with the job. Pull it together.”).

At the beginning of the book, he provides us with a directory of names with all the various administrators and their roles, as well as colleagues, he taught with. It’s a handy list that helps us decipher all the various administrators, support personnel, and fellow teachers, both veterans and newbies alike, who provide help and professional guidance. In addition, he gives us a running class list of all his students, who change on a frequent basis, moving into his room 217 from other classrooms, a homelesss shelter, states, and  other schools. Brown describes how – while talking to a colleague – he suddenly realizes that room 217 has become a dumping ground for the 4th grade kids that no one wanted to teach.

Dan Brown is, first and foremost, a marvelous story-teller, one who gets us right into the thick of things. We meet the children who give him joy and love, those who need more specialized instruction than he can offer, and the children with social/emotional and behavioral difficulties, who disrupt his well-prepared acitivites and lessons, often punching one another, swearing (at the age of 9 and 10!), and breaking one another’s personal belongings as well as Dan’s.

The Great Expectations School gives us a deeper understanding of why talented, creative young teachers like Dan Brown often leave teaching at high-risk schools after a year or two. It will break your heart as you read how much he cared for and loved these children, only wanting to be a great teacher who taught them, inspired them, and shared his own passion for learning. Yet he was discouraged again and again by his principals and even some of his colleagues.

This book will stay with you long after you finish it. If you’d like to catch up with Dan Brown today, he is a regular blogger at The Huffington Post website. He now teaches at a high school in the Bronx and attends graduate school at Teachers College, Columbia University. In the spring of 2008, he spoke at the Ed in ’08 bloggers conference and came under some criticism from Amy Wilkins of Education Trust, who argued that a teacher with his lack of experience had no business teaching in a high-needs school. In this YouTube video, you can see the exchange and Brown's follow-up comments.

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