Teacherland delivers an up-close-and-personal account of the lives of teachers. If you want to go beyond the saints-or-sinners accounts of public education and understand what schools are really like, this book deserves to be at the very top of your reading list. -- David Kirp, author of Improbable Scholars, Berkeley professor and New York Times contributing writer Aaron Pribble's Teacherland adds an important and poignant look at teaching through a practitioner's perspective. Told largely as a series of evocative and thought-provoking vignettes, the book challenges much of the overheated and simplistic political rhetoric surrounding education, offering readers a vastly more nuanced, creative, and memorable look at this vitally important profession. -- Sarah Carr, journalist and author of Hope Against Hope If I were still training teachers, this would be my number one required text. It is insightful, very practical, and delightfully written-among the most creative books for teachers I've ever read. No book can produce a good teacher. But if one could, this would be it! -- Mark Phillips, Professor Emeritus, San Francisco State University, Educational writer for Edutopia and the Marin Independent Journal Not since Up the Down Staircase has there been a book about teaching that is as incisive, funny and interesting as Teacherland, written by a long-time teacher whose credentials include a best-selling book about baseball. This one gets an A plus. -- Russell Hill, author of Tom Hall & the Captain of All These Men of Death Everybody seems to have a voice about education except educators themselves, who are often painted by pundits and policy makers in broad stereotypes-the "bad teacher" or the superhero. With humor, honesty, and humility, Pribble provides the antidote: a work of witness by a real, human teacher reflecting on the craft and the meaning of an authentic education. -- Adam Bessie, Professor of English, Diablo Valley College and Graphic Storyteller