On the fifth day of Ed Boland's first year teaching history in a New York City public school, he found himself yelling helplessly at a girl who stood on her desk and said things to him that can't be printed here.
The Battle for Room 314 is Boland's story of his frustrating and humiliating year of teaching, told with humor and painful honesty. Boland worked for a nonprofit that mentored promising disadvantaged students, but he thought he might accomplish more as a teacher. He quit his job and, after three years of training, he was hired at a school that looked auspicious on paper. He almost immediately found himself struggling to hang on day to day. Most of his students were from working poor families in public housing. Some had been homeless or sold drugs or sex. Many had severe behavioral problems. "I had taken classes in lesson planning, evaluation, psychology, and research. Next to nothing was said about what a first-year teacher most needs to know: how to control a classroom." This, along with the school's poor management and the poverty and violence of his students' lives, set him up to fail. He gradually realized that more importantly, they set his students up to fail.
Boland offers advice to new teachers and recommendations for systemic change. He hopes that in telling this story, he will move the debate on education to address the problems of long-term poverty, racial segregation, immigration reform and unequally funded schools that prevent too many students from building useful rewarding lives. --Sara Catterall