Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids

In 2014, Baker (Traveling Sprinkler; The Way the World Works; The Mezzanine) earned a Maine teaching certificate after attending a six-week orientation and became a substitute teacher. Here he presents a detailed account of teaching 28 elementary, middle, and high school classes in this candid recounting of both the good and bad moments—days in which progress in learning occurred and times when simply maintaining some level of control was the best one could do. We encounter highly motivated students along with those burdened with personal and behavioral issues, as well as boys and girls completely disconnected from school and simply marking time. Baker also presents a picture of an educational system that fills the school day with busywork, in which computers and the Internet may do more harm than good, and where teachers and school personnel spend more time on behavior concerns than on teaching. In the end, Baker has a warm, favorable impression of his charges. Narrator Tom Zingarelli provides a wide range of voices for the many characters appearing in the story.