Education

HOW ED SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS GET WRITTEN

November 15, 2005 1 min read
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Hobo Teacher writes of spotting someone he takes to be a new or soon-to-be-teacher at a car dealership (where he had gone not to buy a car but to partake of the free drinks and cookies and, apparently, grade papers). How did he know she was new to teaching? Easy:

Besides looking rested, she was reading a textbook about teaching methods. As if there is a recipe. You're teaching, not making a quiche. How do these books get written? After a teacher gets fed up and quits, do they go and write a book about how they thought it would be?

Let’s just hope this guy’s not a new-teacher mentor at his school. On second thought, maybe he should be. ...

By the way, in the interests of journalistic integrity, we should mention we’re not quite sure what to make of Hobo Teacher. The banner on his blog claims he is homeless, but the site indicates elsewhere that this a kind of metaphor. (As a teacher, he sees his “home less.” Get it?) There also seem to be three different teachers involved in the site. So, is HT supposed to be a composite portrait? A fictional creation? A kind of Everyman of teaching? In any case, he’s funny.

(Hobo Teacher.)

A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.

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