So You Think You Might Like to Teach: 23 Fictional Teachers (For Real!) Model How to Become and Remain a Successful Teacher

I began teaching in 1964 and am still at it. Thanks to the values of my parents and my maternal grandmother (Beba), as well as to their high expectations for me, I learned at a young age that no matter how old I got, I would always be a student. Later I learned that I would always be a teacher.

Not only is that combination of student and teacher an unbeatable one, it is a necessary one if by a "successful" teacher we mean a person whose humanity is expressed through what is both a calling and a career. (Geoffrey Chaucer put it more poetically in The Canterbury Tales: "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.")

This is a book about answering the call to become a teacher and working to be an effective one (whatever your subject but generally on the secondary school level). So You Think You Might Like to Teach features the classroom experiences of 23 fictional teachers and the practical lessons they learned from their successes and failures about what happens of value on both sides of the teachers desk.

This book's 23 "novel" role models (from contemporary and classic works of literature) may not be actual but they are quite real (flaws and all); and although some of them may be larger than life, all are true to life both in and out of the classroom.

I've chosen these particular fictional teachers for you to learn from because "you think you might like to teach." I suspect, and hope, that you want to become the best possible teacher you can be and never have to worry about burnout. Your joy in your career and your students' joy in your joy will depend on it.

And so I wish you the best should you decide to profoundly affect the lives of, let's say, 151 very special human beings in the next school year: 150 students and you, their teacher.

Robert Eidelberg