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Substitute : going to school with a thousand kids / Nicholson Baker.

by Baker, Nicholson.

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Blue Rider Press, [2016]

371.14122 B168s

Baker, Nicholson.

Substitute teaching -- Anecdotes.

Substitute teachers -- Maine -- Biography.

Novelists -- Maine -- Biography.

Authors -- Maine -- Biography.

9780399160981 (hc.)

719 pages ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Day one: Small but hostile -- Day two: Mystery picture -- Day three: I suck at everything -- Day four: Your brain looks infected -- Day five: Toast -- Day six: Out comes the eyeball -- Day seven: What the hell was that? -- Day eight: He's just a hairy person -- Day nine: I can write, but I don't write -- Day ten: Don't kill penguins cause other friends get sad -- Day eleven: She stole my grape -- Day twelve: I don't judge -- Day thirteen: There's nothing exciting or fun happening today -- Day fourteen: When you close your eyes and think of peace, what do you see? -- Day fifteen: But we didn't do anything -- Day sixteen: Silent ball -- Day seventeen: Non-negotiables -- Day eighteen: The man who needs it doesn't know it -- Day nineteen: Simple machines -- Day twenty: Stink blob to the rescue -- Day twenty-one: Keep your dear teacher happy -- Day twenty-two: He particularly doesn't like this particular spot -- Day twenty-three: How do you spell juicy? -- Day twenty-four: Hamburger writing -- Day twenty-five: High on summertime -- Day twenty-six: I kind of break my own spirit sometimes -- Day twenty-seven: That's just the way school is -- Day twenty-eight: Plutonic love.

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 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 - mundane worksheets, recess time-outs, surprise nosebleeds, rebellions, griefs, jealousies, minor triumphs, kindergarten show-and-tell, daily lessons on everything from geology to metal tech to the Holocaust - as he and his pupils struggle to find ways to get through the day. Nicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and five works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke. He lives in Maine.

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