As a journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times for 25 years, Baldacci reported on Chicago's education crises before school reform became popular, and she applauded Mayor Richard M. Daley's efforts to improve contract negotiations with teachers, repair decaying buildings and better the struggling South Side's financial status. Instead of continuing to lobby for amelioration of the situation from behind her desk, Baldacci "turned in [her] press credentials to become a teacher." Since making that initial foray four years ago, she's compassionately demonstrated devotion to her inner city high school special-education students, whose school circumstances a former U. S. education secretary called "an educational disaster" (and which the author herself likens to the sinking of the Titanic). In diary-like prose, Baldacci recounts the apprehensions that plagued her as she applied to become an intern teacher through an alternative certification program whose aim was to address the national teacher shortage. She describes her first day, when she was armed with excitement and anxiety, as a nightmare, noting she "had never seen kids act like that in a classroom with an adult present." With 36 students crammed into her room, Baldacci attempted to impart wisdom while the threads of her students' lives wrapped around her. In addition to teaching, the writer asserts that she learned numerous things from her students, including empathy. Baldacci's book is both beautiful and heartbreaking. It belongs in a "first day kit" for new teachers and deserves a hard look from legislators, school administrators and voters who are considering cutting budgets in school districts across the country. (Oct.)
