September 4, 2007 • Print This Post

I saw a book the other day. The title made me chuckle because I could only imagine the little gems inside. The book is Tales from the Teachers’ Lounge by Robert Wilder. The publisher describes it like this:

From the critically acclaimed author of Daddy Needs a Drink—hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “consistently hilarious”—comes a series of irreverent, wickedly observant essays about what it really means to be a teacher today. With his trademark wit and wisdom, Robert Wilder dissects the world’s noblest profession—whether he’s taming a classroom full of hormonal teenagers or going one-on-one with the school bully.

Wilder was twenty-six when he found his true calling. Leaving a lucrative advertising career in New York, he got a job as an assistant first-grade teacher at a Santa Fe alternative school—and never looked back. Now he brings his unique perspective—as a teacher, parent, and former student—to a series of laugh-out-loud essays that show teaching at its most absurd…and most rewarding. With brutal candor he chronicles his own lively adventures in modern education, from navigating cutthroat kindergarten sign-ups to subbing for a class experi-ment gone wrong–and dares to tell about it.

He shares the surprising lessons he’s learned in the trenches of his profession, including how to bribe a four-year-old (his own) to stop swearing in a Lutheran preschool and the best way to teach moody teenagers…manage “helicopter” parents…and cope with bullies—whether of the school-yard, Internet, or parental kind. And he offers tough love for cheaters who log on to SchoolSucks.com, then puts to rest forever the question of why new teachers gain weight (hint: the free donuts don’t help).

In Tales from the Teachers’ Lounge, Robert Wilder charts life’s learning curve with a warmth and humor you don’t find in textbooks. By turns heartwarming, eye-opening, and uproariously funny, these pitch-perfect essays offer priceless lessons in life, family, learning, and teaching from a true lover of education.

Neither the author’s website nor the publisher’s website have excerpts or info directly from the book that I can see. However, Barnes & Noble online offers an excerpt. The author should highlight the excerpt because it’s pretty damn funny. Apparently Wilder went from a big-time NYC advertising job to teaching first grade at a private school in New Mexico. He refers to the school as a “local hippie school” and offers this insight:

Since this was my first teaching gig after a short career in the backbiting business some call advertising, I was eager to help these little critters learn to read and write and do the kind of simple math even the actors from Saved by the Bell could master. I imagined myself sitting next to a girl in pigtails, helping her sound out Dick and Jane books. In this hippie haven, I never saw the Janes, though, and dealt mostly with the dicks.

His descriptions from there cracked me up. I’m hooked.

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