Thank You, Teacher: Grateful Students Tell the Stories of the Teachers Who Changed Their Lives

by Holly Holbert, Bruce Holbert

Overview

What do rock stars, Nobel laureates, bestselling novelists, astronauts, and attorneys have in common? A teacher changed their lives. Like them, most of us can name a teacher who gave us not only good instruction but also confidence and drive. But, in the face of teachers being blamed for a variety of social and economic woes, teachers themselves can easily wonder whether they are making a difference in students’ lives. When veteran teacher Bruce Holbert asked himself this question, his wife, Holly, responded by sending letters to hundreds of people she had never met and had no reason to believe would respond, asking about teachers who mattered to them. She was overwhelmed by answers. Thank You, Teacher presents more than eighty of these up-close-and-personal stories. By a delightfully diverse range of contributors, these essays are wise and witty testaments to the teachers who do what they do every day without expecting recognition, but who so richly deserve it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608684182
Publisher:	New World Library
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bruce Holbert earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he held a Teaching Writing Fellowship. His second novel, The Hour of Lead, was a Kirkus Best Book for 2014 and won the 2015 Washington State Book Award for fiction. Bruce has worked for thirty years as a high school teacher.

Holly Holbert graduated from Eastern Washington Universitywith a degree in geography and elementary education. She and Bruce met there and were married in 1985. They have three children and live on six acres overlooking Long Lake on the Spokane River.

Editorial Reviews

03/14/2016
Holly Holbert, after admiring the dedication of her husband, Bruce, to his work as a high school teacher in Spokane, Wash., decided to solicit letters from famous people recognizing their favorite teachers. The response was extraordinary: more than 150 people—each remarkably successful—wrote back with anecdotes and essays in praise of that one teacher whose attention, encouragement, character, or peculiarities helped shape them. The names of the contributors will likely stir most of the interest in this book. They include such luminaries as John Glenn, Maya Angelou, Rosanne Cash, Beau Bridges, Sherry Lansing, and Ken Burns. This is not a book one reads straight through, but a book to dip in and out of, and an occasion to recall from the reader's own special teachers who made all the difference. (May)

Publishers Weekly

“Great teachers make all the difference in one’s journey to self-realization. I would never have become the writer I am, such as I am, without their incalculable encouragement. So this tribute to the noble, underacknowledged importance of the teaching profession cannot be recommended more heartily.”
— Alex Shoumatoff, editor of DispatchesFromTheVanishingWorld.com and contributor to Vanity Fair and the New Yorker

From the Book

“Like those of most good teachers, her most important lessons didn’t come from a book. She taught me how to be a human being, to have dignity, and that it was never appropriate to whine or complain.”
— Maya Angelou

“It all could have been different for me and would have been, if not for whatever it is that makes an older person — busy person, tired person, finite person — turn toward a young person and say, in whatever way is needed, ‘Of course you can. Why not? Give it a try.’”
— George Saunders

“When I was a child of nine, I met the first great person in my life. I would forever use her as the needle of my moral compass, of my never-ending passion to learn, and of my work ethic. That person was my teacher.”
— Gene Simmons

“His tangents — the fascinating ruminations between the lines of the assigned texts, the stuff we’d never find in a book — kept our interest in a way that no prospectus could. We left his classroom not merely with notebooks full of jottings but with hearts excited and inspired.”
— Jerry Spinelli

“Teaching is an act of faith. Life too. You do the best you know how. And you hope that it makes a difference. And when you get that opportunity, you thank the people who made a difference in your life. This is where the meaning comes from.”
— Jess Walter

“To this day I remember her kindness, her patience, and the enthusiasm that she mustered each and every day.”
— Daisy Martinez

From the Publisher