Book description
From the whistle-blowing teacher behind the headlines: one
inspirational teacher, one extraordinary year, hope and heartbreak on
the front lines of an inner-city school, To Miss With Love by
Katharine Birbalsingh is the remarkable and eye opening expos of our
education system.
A third of teachers leave within their first term on the job. This
one wouldn't quit for all the world.
Meet Furious - sixteen, handsome and completely out of control.
Nothing frightens him and no one can get through to him. Now meet
Munchkin - a sweet kid with glasses who's an easy target and needs
protecting. Then there's Seething and Deranged, two girls who are
brimming with bad attitude; Fifty and Cent, who act like gangsters but
are afraid of getting beaten up; and Stoic, a brilliant young mind
struggling to survive. In the midst of them all, there is a bodyguard
and bouncer, a counsellor and confidante, a young woman whose job it
is to motivate and inspire them and somehow keep them out of trouble:
their teacher. None will make it through the year unscathed. Some may
not even make it at all...
Spanning a year of shocking truths and hard-won victories, of fights
and phone-thefts, teenage pregnancies and the dreaded OFSTED report,
this is the remarkable diary of an inner-city school teacher.
Revealing the extraordinary chaos, mismanagement and wrong-thinking
that plague our education system, it is a funny, surprising and
sometimes heartbreaking journey from the frontlines of the classroom
to the heart of modern Britain.
'The constant frustration, the struggle to hold on to your ideals in
the face of a broken system - this book is the story of contemporary
state education. It's both heart-breaking and inspiring' Toby Young
'Everyone should read this book and do a bit of re-thinking.
Straight from the chalk-face - a book which explains why our kids have
been failed by State Education' Rod Liddle
'The teacher who laid bare the chaos in the education systems. . .
by delivering some brutal home truths. . . articulate and
inspirational' Daily Mail
'Charismatic. . . .electrifying. . . This remarkable woman has
neatly identified the problem with education' The Times
Katharine Birbalsingh is Britain's most outspoken and controversial
teacher. Educated at a comprehensive school, she earned a degree in
philosophy and modern languages at Oxford university and has taught
for over a decade in inner-city schools. To Miss with Love was
for several years an anonymous blog that exposed the reality of
inner-city schools and the problems with the education system. She now
writes regularly for the Telegraph and has given evidence at
the Commons select committee for education. Her views have sparked a
national debate. www. katharinebirbalsingh. com
Katharine Birbalsingh is Britain's most outspoken and controversial
teacher. Educated at a comprehensive school, she earned a degree in
philosophy and modern languages at Oxford university and has taught for
over a decade in inner-city schools.
To Miss with Love
was for several years an anonymous blog that exposed the reality of
inner-city schools and the problems with the education system. She now
writes regularly for the
Telegraph
and has given evidence at the Commons select committee for education.
Her views have sparked a national debate. www. katharinebirbalsingh. com
