School Memoirs

"Do you have to have sex to have a baby?" It's a question that ten-year-old Tali Nay asked the office assistant at her elementary school after the woman had done her best to explain how it all happened to a roomful of confused girls. Or maybe Tali was the only one who was confused. It's entirely possible, for if there's anything she knew at this point in her schooling, it was that she—without fail—was the last to know about anything interesting. Take her first day of kindergarten, where it turned out that every other kid already knew which letters were the vowels. Her first lesson as a ...

Is an entertaining memoir about learning the window cleaning trade with no training over 28 years. Through the different trial and errors of various aspects of residential window cleaning, window cleaning lessons were learned in a humorous and adventurous way. In turn many lessons in Life were also learned.

I got into medical school by saying I was black. I lied. Honestly, I am about as black as my sister Mindy Kaling. Once upon a time, I was an ethically challenged, hard-partying Indian-American frat boy enjoying my third year of college. That is until I realized I didn't have the grades or test scores to get into medical school. Legitimately.

This is the story of one woman's journey to find herself. Armed with nothing but a love of food and the words of the 20th-century food writer M.F.K. Fisher, she travels from France to Italy, then the Congo, and back again. Along the way, she goes to pastry school in Paris, eats the most perfect apricots over the Tuscan hills, watches a family of gorillas grazing deep in the Congolese brush, has her heart broken one last time on a bridge in Lyon, and, ultimately, finds a path to life and joy.

The authors of the best-selling Competing on Internet Time (a Businessweek top-10 book) analyze the strategies, principles, and skills of three of the most successful and influential figures in business - Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs - offering lessons for all managers and entrepreneurs on leadership, strategy, and execution.

For a decade, Jason Wright taught in the same inner-city primary school in a deprived area of Bradford, West Yorkshire. From the outset, Wright battles socially-deprived children, unruly parents, strange headteachers and never-ending piles of paperwork. Life in the School Lane is a true account of what it is really like to be a primary school teacher in the UK. There is no sugar-coating here. From the children who don't want to be at school and their parents who question his methods to the bullying tactics of his headteacher and the ever-present threat of Ofsted, Wright’s life becomes ...

High school is the jungle. This is your field guide. Four Years in the Jungle is a coming-of-age memoir that doesn’t sugarcoat a thing. With unfiltered honesty and unforgettable stories, JJ takes you inside the real high school experience—cafeteria politics, sports pressure, hallway chaos, awkward dances, academic tournaments, and the deep, hilarious friendships that make it all worth it.

Dave Kindred has covered dozens of Super Bowls and written about stars like Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. But a high-school girls basketball team—the Lady Potters of Morton, Illinois—stands apart from the rest.

The Best Life Stories by Reader's Digest are 150 of the best hand-picked real-life tales of resilience, joy, and hope - all in 150 words or less! People think I'm crazy for teaching middle schoolers.

The journalism teacher who inspired generations of teenagers to aim for excellence—not just on the high school newspaper but for the rest of their lives—provides the playbook and offers strategies for everyone to improve their writing skills. Part memoir, part instruction manual, former UPI reporter and magazine freelancer Kathleen Neumeyer explains how she inadvertently taught smart but spoiled teenagers how to manage billion-dollar companies, after an inadvertent midlife career change to advising student publications at one of America’s top prep schools. Praise for Kathleen Neumeyer...

Malala's memoir of a remarkable teenage girl who risked her life for the right to go to school is now abridged and adapted for chapter book listeners. Raised in a changing Pakistan by an enlightened father from a poor background and a beautiful, illiterate mother, Malala was taught to stand up for what she believes. Her story of bravery and determination in the face of extremism is more timely than ever.

A news-breaking memoir revealing the secret, high level negotiations that could soon transform the map of the Middle East. Why would a sitting head of state choose to write about the most explosive issues he faces? King Abdullah does so now because he believes we face a moment of truth: a last chance for peace in the Middle East. The prize is enormous; the cost of failure far greater than we dare imagine.

Now here at last, is McCourt's long-awaited audiobook about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer. Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty, McCourt records the trials, triumphs, and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City.

Phil Chalmers has spent more than a decade visiting high security prisons to interview young offenders, his mission is to attempt to answer the questions we all are asking. In Inside the Mind of a Teen Killer, Phil explores the reasons why teens kill; the warning signs we must be looking for; and offers a game plan to keep our homes, schools, and communities safe. This book may help save your life or the life of a child you love!

Starting in 1902 at a country school that had an enrollment of fourteen, Frank Boyden built an academy that has long since taken its place on a level with Andover and Exeter. Boyden, who died in 1972, was the school's headmaster for sixty-six years. John McPhee portrays a remarkable man "at the near end of a skein of magnanimous despots who...created enduring schools through their own individual energies, maintained them under their own absolute rule, and left them forever imprinted with their own personalities."

You are with the author when he ejects from his burning Navy jet onto a karst ridge near Hanoi. What follows in this meticulously researched memoir is an account of one of the most implausible and heroic rescues of the air-war - and the aftermath. The events immediately following his rescue carry the author to a secret base in Laos and then to a makeshift hospital in Saigon. The larger story, however, is of the author’s complex relationship with Vietnam. It begins in Saigon, where he completes high school and comes to love the Vietnamese people.

"...hilarious, heartbreaking, and deeply relatable." - Becky Bain, Writer & EditorBrett Perkins tries to fit in but rarely succeeds. Living with his sister and single mother in 1970s Southern California, Brett continually finds himself in ridiculous situations of his own making. From nearly dyeing himself permanently green to getting himself shot in the head with an arrow, you'll either burst out laughing or turn red with second-hand embarrassment as this screwball navigates his elementary school years. Almost a Martian is a collection of stories for those who want to feel better about ...

In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend a boarding school. A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed firsthand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, describing the pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all.

Who are your five people? Find your unexpected heroes in grade school. In Grade School, Anthony Massucci shares a deeply personal and inspiring memoir about the transformative power of unexpected support. His childhood, marked by struggles at home, was illuminated by the unwavering kindness and encouragement of his grade school teachers. Their influence shaped his attitude, spirit, and future and serves as a beacon of hope for anyone facing challenges. At a time when many might retreat inward, Anthony chose to lean into the support system that formed around him.

John Amos Comenius, a 17th-century theologian and reformer, had so great an influence on Western schooling that he has been called the father of modern education. To this day he remains one of the most influential and fascinating thinkers in the history of education. In this concise introduction to the work of Comenius, Dr. David Smith sketches some of Comenius's central ideas, pointing to several important themes that summarize Comenius's tireless work for educational reform. Listeners will discover that amongst the literally hundreds of works Comenius wrote in Czech and Latin, many of which are lost to us today, he created one of the world's most successful children's books; suggested that learning should resemble gardening; and proposed that joy, piety, and harmony are central to the education of children.