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TO TEACH: THE JOURNEY, IN COMICS by William Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. 128pp. $15.95.
Teaching at its best is not a matter of technique - it is primarily an act of love.
William Ayers
If I am left with only one lingering feeling from reading To Teach: The Journey, in Comics, it is love. This book exudes love: love for the profession of teaching and the brave, creative souls who engage in it; love for the children and youth who inspire, challenge, and teach the teacher; and even, in the end, love for the educational bureaucrats who are lampooned at various points in the book. William Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner obviously adore teaching in all its messiness, and that adoration is infectious.
This book is a graphic novel adaptation of William Ayers's classic work To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, first published in 1993. The original text has been brought to life through striking black-and-white cartoons from artist Ryan Alexander-Tanner. As in the original, the graphic novel is made up of eight chapters, each delving into a different aspect of teaching. The ideas are grounded in Ayers's time as a...