Let Teachers Teach

Earlier this year, former Joplin, Missouri classroom teacher Randy Turner struck a chord with teachers across the United States in a Huffington Post essay in which he recommended that young people not become classroom teachers.That essay, which received more than 180,000 Facebook likes and was shared more than 50,000 times, is included in Let Teachers Teach, a collection of Turner's essays on today's education, his own teaching, and colleagues and students who have touched his life.In...
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Earlier this year, former Joplin, Missouri classroom teacher Randy Turner struck a chord with teachers across the United States in a Huffington Post essay in which he recommended that young people not become classroom teachers.That essay, which received more than 180,000 Facebook likes and was shared more than 50,000 times, is included in Let Teachers Teach, a collection of Turner's essays on today's education, his own teaching, and colleagues and students who have touched his life.In Let Teachers Teach, Turner, a former newspaper reporter and editor, offers his first collection of essays detailing the problems in American education and most of those problems, he says, start with those who are needlessly trying to reform it.Turner addresses the attacks made on teachers, the billionaire reformers, teaching to the test, and the lies that are told to make discipline statistics look better.The book also features Turner's essays on a former student's suicide, tributes to a fired principal and an inspirational teacher, and his writing on the May 22, 2011, Joplin Tornado and its effect and on his school and his teaching.The collection also includes Turner's updates on several of the essays.The book is Turner's sixth non-fiction work, following The Turner Report, Newspaper Days, 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado, Spirit of Hope: The Year After the Joplin Tornado, and Scars from the Tornado: One Year at Joplin East Middle School. He has also written three novels.