Substitute, Nicholson Baker
Substitute, Nicholson Baker
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Substitute
Going to School With a Thousand Kids

Author: Nicholson Baker

Narrator: Tom Zingarelli

Unabridged: 22 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/25/2016


Synopsis

In 2014, after a brief orientation course and a few fingerprinting sessions, Nicholson Baker became an on-call substitute teacher in a Maine public school district. He awoke to the dispatcher's five-forty a.m. phone call and headed to one of several nearby schools; when he got there, he did his best to follow lesson plans and help his students get something done. What emerges from Baker's experience is a complex, often touching deconstruction of public schooling in America: children swamped with overdue assignments, overwhelmed by the marvels and distractions of social media and educational technology, and staff who weary themselves trying to teach in step with an often outmoded or overly ambitious standard curriculum. In Baker's hands, the inner life of the classroom is examined anew as the author and his pupils struggle to find ways to get through the day. Baker is one of the most inventive and remarkable writers of our time, and Substitute, filled with humor, honesty, and empathy, may be his most impressive work of nonfiction yet.

About Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and five works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hermann Hesse Prize, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano; both his children went to Maine public schools.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Maria

Why was this so long? I really adore Nicholson Baker. I do! So, why was his editor on vacation at a time like this? This is a diary of Mr. Baker’s 28 days of substitute teaching at public schools in Maine. Great. Got it. He has jotted every I and crossed every T of his experience. So... where is the......more

Goodreads review by Lesa

I have never read anything by Mr. Baker before, but I now understand that he is a well-respected author. I, however, am a teacher. Mr. Baker, I am sorry to say is a teacher's worst nightmare. He lets the children run the classroom and creates noise and disruption throughout the school. The teachers......more