cover image Boys: A Schoolmaster's Journal

Boys: A Schoolmaster's Journal

Ronald Bazarini. Walker & Company, $17.95 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-8027-1053-6

At St. Bernard's, a private school for boys in Manhattan, where he has taught the fourth grade for 18 years, the author of this engaging journal is known as ``Baz.'' As he relates his experiences within and outside the classroom in a series of amusing and insightful vignettes, the reader is aware of a true teacher at work. Among his youthful charges there is a remarkable level of sophistication; so, without a pause, Baz accepts the invitation of a nine-year-old to join him ``for drinks'' at a midtown hotel where he has a tab. More familiar in the teacher's ambiance are parental conferences about troubling and troublesome students and heady encounters with individualistic grade-schoolers in the learning process. Throughout, there is an aura of rapport nourished by a nonconformist educator who reciprocates his students' affection. (Nov.)