Teacher Boy: A memoir in Bloomington, MN

Through personal anecdotes from his 1980s childhood, '90s adolescence, and a teaching career that started at the turn of the millennium and continued through the pandemic, Teacher Boy pierces through mediocre teachers, opinionated onlookers, layers of bureaucracy, swarming technology, an expectant society, ego, and self-doubt, to defend the value of education even if it wasn't perfect for any of us. Teacher Boy catalogues his own education, celebrates the potential a teacher can have to serve or fail families, turns a critical eye to his own field, and claps back at school critics. Teacher Boy was a substitute, private tutor, homebound teacher, middle and high school teacher, and behavior interventionist in his home town and halfway around the world, in the wealthiest and poorest parts of the globe. Teacher Boy is a coming of age story. In peddling information to others he found universal truth in the students he treasured, and being their teacher finally allowed him to learn.