Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher’s First Year

The relationship between Mr. Turner and Esme is contentious from the start. Even before the school opens, Mr. Turner makes unreasonable demands of Esme, asking her to go door-to-door soliciting donations for the school and calling her at home late at night with requests and questions. Once the school year begins, Mr. Turner is suspicious and irritated by Esme’s unconventional teaching methods and her initiatives and new ideas. Most of all, he is frustrated by her name. He demands that she be called Mrs. Codell. Esme refuses, insisting that the students and staff address her by her chosen name, Madame Esme. Though he never comes around to seeing the importance of letting a person pick his or her own name, Mr. Turner eventually relents or at least stops regularly harassing Esme about it.

Though Esme’s relationship with the Vice Principal Coil is less contentious than her relationship with Mr. Turner, Esme still feels disrespected and misunderstood by Coil. Her first negative impression of Ms. Coil is formed by hearing Ms. Coil bad-mouthing of students. Later, for no apparent reason, Ms. Coil comes into Esme’s classroom and begins moving things around, simply because this is in her purview as an administrator. To give her a taste of her own medicine, Esme goes into Ms. Coil’s office and moves a plant, to demonstrate how it feels like a violation to rearrange someone’s space without any rhyme or reason. Later, Ms. Coil makes Esme go to her apartment to help her move a piece of furniture. On this trip, Ms. Coil casually reveals that she has plagiarized much of her doctorate dissertation. Ms. Coil also uses the trip as an occasion to tell Esme to stop fighting so much with Mr. Turner.

Esme’s mentor, Ismene, is a recurring source of inspiration in the book. Esme thinks back to her often, especially when stuck in a challenging moment. Esme values the lessons that she took from Ismene, such as the advice to act, not teach, and to try and look past student’s poor behavior for as long as possible. According to Ismene, it is a sign of inexperience when teachers worry about how they are doing, rather than how the students are doing. Because Ismene passes away just before the start of Esme’s first year of teaching, Esme is not able to physically ask her for advice, but Ismene’s wisdom is something she silently draws on often.

Esme is not particularly close with this colleague, who talks Esme out of quitting after an altercation with Mr. Turner. Esme does value Mrs. Federman’s point of view on teaching, though, because Mrs. Federman is a veteran inner-city school teacher who has seen and been through a lot. What Mrs. Federman tries to get Esme to see is that Mr. Turner is just a cog in the machine, and that the bureaucracy of public education ties the hands of many, including Mr. Turner. There are bigger fights, Mrs. Federman tells her, which are more important than this battle over a name with Mr. Turner.

B.B.’s mother is abusive and his father is wheelchair-bound after being shot in a gang-related incident. B.B. acts out at school, fighting and refusing to work. His relationship with Esme becomes more contentious as the year goes on. When he begins calling her names and attempting to hit her, Esme goes to Mr. Turner, demanding assistance. Mr. Turner suspends B.B., which turns out to be the worst possible outcome, as time at home is the most damaging to B.B. Though she tries hard to repair their connection, even involving the school counselor, Esme comes to the conclusion that because she cannot fix B.B.’s family life all she can do is care for him as much as possible while he is in the building.

Latoya serves as an example to Esme of the hidden burdens that all students and individuals may be carrying around with them. Esme is initially tempted to yell at Latoya for her chronic tardiness but decides instead to sit her down and talk with her. It turns out that this conversation was sorely needed because housing insecurity was the cause of Latoya’s tardiness. When Esme learns that Latoya and her sister are living at a shelter, she is ashamed of her previous anger and irritation and becomes newly resolved to hear all students out fully.

Like so many of Esme’s thirty-one students, Ozzie is dealing with a tumultuous and violent home life. Esme doesn’t really find out about what Ozzie is dealing with at home until his grades begin to drop midyear. Then, via a conversation with Ozzie’s mom, Esme learns that Ozzie is living with a stepfather given to physical abuse. Ozzie’s mother is aware that Ozzie knows where the family gun is and that he thinks about using it. At school, Ozzie attempts to cope with the stress in his home life via an eating disorder. When he starts getting physically ill after lunch every day, Esme decides to walk down to the cafeteria to see what Ozzie is selecting for lunch. She is shocked and appalled when she discovered that Ozzie often eats as many as ten or eleven hamburgers in a sitting, and also scarfs down any leftovers he can find. Esme meets with the cafeteria workers to try and put a stop to this and to get him on a path to healthy eating, at least during school hours.

Because of her precarious family life, with only an abusive father home on house arrest to watch her and her younger sibling, Asha brings her two-year-old brother to school with her one day. Esme is unsure of how to respond. She doesn’t want Asha to get in trouble and half suspects that someone (a mother, a grandmother) will come to claim the toddler. When no one does, Esme spends the day teaching while also watching the two-year-old. Esme decides that the decision on Asha’s part came from the want to love and protect her brother, and that they both did the right thing.

Esme’s meeting with Twanette’s mother illustrates to Esme just how wrong a parent-teacher conference can go. Though Esme hopes to use the meeting to sort out why Twanette keeps taking pencils that don’t belong to her, Esme does more learning than teaching in this exchange. Mostly what she learns is that Twanette is beaten regularly by her mother, who views this as a necessary “tune up” to keep Twanette in line. After this meeting, Esme is more cautious about how she approaches parents, as she realizes that parental involvement may end up encroaching on her students’ mental and physical safety.