Both Sides

The Classroom from Where I Stand is a collection of twenty-five short, narrative essays that look at the relationship between a teacher and her students. The thread tying these passages together is the connected humanity between teacher and student, and the implications of that connectedness. While the collection focuses on the author's personal experiences in education, her specific role as a teacher also serves as a vehicle to explore the more universal power that teachers have to do good for students. Rebecca Potter uses her experiences as a teacher and a student to explore questions within education, such as: why does education matter for the ones who are presumably doomed to fail anyway, what does it mean to care about a student, why do teachers stay in the field with so much against them? These questions are especially important as our country deals with serious matters like school shootings, pension issues, and teacher strikes.