Goodbye Homeboy, Steve Mariotti
Goodbye Homeboy, Steve Mariotti
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
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Goodbye Homeboy
How My Students Drove Me Crazy and Inspired a Movement

Author: Steve Mariotti, Debra Devi

Narrator: Matthew Josdal

Unabridged: 8 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/06/2019


Synopsis

One sunny afternoon in 1982, a young businessman experienced a terrifying mugging in New York City that shook him to his core.

Tortured by nightmares about the teens who roughed him up, Steve Mariotti sought counseling. When his therapist suggested that he face his fears, Mariotti closed his small import-export business and became a teacher at the city's most notorious public school—Boys and Girls High in Bed-Stuy.

Although his nightmares promptly ceased, Mariotti's out-of-control students rapidly drove him to despair. One day, Mariotti stepped out of the classroom so his students wouldn't see him cry. In a desperate move to save his job, he took off his watch and marched back in with an impromptu sales pitch for it. To his astonishment, his students were riveted.

Mariotti realized his students felt trapped in soul-crushing poverty. They saw zero connection between school and improving their lives. Whenever Mariotti connected their lessons to entrepreneurship, though, even his most disruptive students got excited about learning.

By turns tragic and hilarious, Goodbye Homeboy shares Mariotti's flaws and missteps as he connects deeply with his troubled students—saving himself in the process.


About Steve Mariotti

Steve Mariotti is the founder and former CEO of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and an advocate for entrepreneurs worldwide. His books include The Young Entrepreneur's Guide to Starting and Running a Business and An Entrepreneur's Manifesto, which makes a convincing case for the power of entrepreneurship education to combat poverty, terrorism, and totalitarianism. Mariotti is also the author of award-winning junior, high-school, and college textbooks on entrepreneurship and small business management. He is a popular Huffington Post blogger.

In 1982, Mariotti left a successful business career to become a public high-school teacher in tough New York City neighborhoods like East New York, Bed-Study, and Fort Apache in the South Bronx. Frustrated at first by his rowdy classrooms, Mariotti discovered he could motivate even his most challenging students by teaching them how to run a small business. This experience inspired him to create NFTE in 1987 to bring entrepreneurship education to low-income youth, and empower them to create pathways out of poverty. Today, NFTE is widely considered the leading provider of entrepreneurship education to low-income youth worldwide.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Píaras on July 30, 2020

Bringing entrepreneurship education to low-income youth... Goodbye Homeboy: How My Students Drove Me Crazy and Inspired a Movement by Steve Mariotti is a poignant, emotive and humorous memoir of his career as a special ed teacher in New York City’s most dangerous public high schools during the early......more

Goodreads review by Randal on October 08, 2019

An inspirational story of a man who, rather than admit defeat at the hands of his tormentors, looked his fears in the eyes and became a teacher of disadvantaged youth. This book will at times make you laugh, make you cry, make you question what in the world is going on in our educational system, mak......more

Goodreads review by Reader on November 20, 2019

Reviewed by Araceli Noriega for Reader Views (11/19) “Goodbye Homeboy: How My Students Drove Me Crazy and Inspired a Movement,” author Steve Mariotti’s memoir, tells the story of a teacher’s early experiences working with some of the most mistreated students living in the inner city in the 1980s. Alo......more

Goodreads review by Jimmy on August 28, 2020

Teaching the business and entrepreneurship strategies to at risk youth This is the story of Steve Mariotti and how he went from being a terrified man in therapy after a mugging to the toughest high school in the city. He discovered that teaching the students how to become entrepreneurs was the way to......more

Goodreads review by Valery on July 30, 2020

Goodbye Homeboy: How My Students Drove Me Crazy and Inspired a Movement is one of the most inspirational stories you will ever read. A pivotal moment in the author's life changed the trajectory of his life, along with the lives of his future students. This is a great memoir that shows the tremendous......more