Watching children learn is a beautiful and extraordinary experience....
It is a kind of magic, a kind of loving, a kind of art. It is teaching. Just teaching. Just what I do. What I did. Past tense.
In 2014, Gabrielle Stroud was a very dedicated teacher with over a decade of experience. Months later, she resigned in frustration and despair when she realised that the Naplan-test education model was stopping her from doing the very thing she was best at: teaching individual children according to their needs and talents.
Her groundbreaking essay 'Teaching Australia' in the February 2016 Griffith Review outlined her experiences and provoked a huge response from former and current teachers around the world. That essay lifted the lid on a scandal that is yet to properly break — that our education system is unfair to our children and destroying their teachers.
In a powerful memoir inspired by her original groundbreaking essay, Gabrielle tells the full story: how she came to teaching, what makes a great teacher, what our kids need from their teachers, and what it was that finally broke her. A brilliant and heartbreaking memoir that cuts to the heart of a vital matter of national importance.
