TO TEACH on Huffington Post
William Ayers’s new book To Teach: The Journey, In Comics is part autobiography, part education reform tract, and entirely enjoyable to read. I don’t know another edu-book that blends these three elements so well. To Teach updates Ayers’s 1993 book of the same title– except this time around he’s featured in comic panels whose only facial features are dark hair, opaque glasses, and a mustache. It’s profoundly charming.
Ayers leads us on a tour of a teaching life that skips between overflowing love for his craft and pupils and extraordinary systemic frustrations. The first stop: debunking popular myths about teaching. Ayers fights myths that teachers are savior super-genuises that lead classes full of students who are all above average. It’s a fitting opening note for a book that seeks aggressively to confront distortions and impediments to quality classroom environments. Ayers writes, “Myths tower above the world of teaching like giant, fire-breathing