The Battle for Room 314

November 16, 2015
In 2006, Boland left behind a rewarding 20-year career in fund-raising to teach at a New York City public high school. He lasted only one year on the job, but the experience was enough to supply him with a book’s worth of stories and insights. In this enthralling memoir, Boland spends most of his time in a classroom at Union Street, an innovative, reform-minded school, struggling to maintain control of his charges. “In room 314,” he writes, “my roles of ineffective cop and feckless social worker always trumped my job as a teacher.” Throughout, Boland introduces us to some of the memorable students who gave him fits. There is Jesús, the tough guy menace; Byron, the bored, out-of-place genius; and a fearsome rabble-rouser nicknamed Nemesis. Like most real-world education policy, the advice for improvement that is given to Boland is extremely contradictory. Despite his relative inexperience, his bold call to action at the end of the book is right on the money: it perfectly summarizes what is wrong with public education in America, and how we can fix it. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Boland’s memoir is a deeply human story about the power of teaching. Agent: Jim Levine, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency.

November 15, 2015
A nonprofit executive tells the story of the year he spent as a teacher in a struggling urban high school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A few years into his career as the development director of Project Advance, a nonprofit organization that helped underprivileged kids attain elite educations, Boland decided that he wanted in on "the front lines of education." After two years of graduate training, he quit his comfortable job and began his teaching apprenticeship, where his idealism was soon tested. While the author worked with a few genuinely good teacher-mentors, many he observed turned out to be "burned out and boring" if not outright incompetent. His hope was temporarily restored when he began his first job teaching ninth-grade world history at Union Street School. There, he met dynamic instructors who seemed to be making a difference among the urban youth they taught. As soon as he stepped into his own classroom, however, he discovered just how difficult his task would be. Many students openly defied him as they derailed his efforts to teach them; only a few showed any sincere willingness to learn. When he and his colleagues attempted to make changes to their schedules to better manage the large number of students they taught, the administration rejected their plans. What made his job, which he left after one year, even more trying was learning about the lives of his students outside of class. Many had not only dealt with poverty, but also violence, drug and sexual abuse, neglect, and even homelessness. Three years later, Boland learned that half of his original 90 students graduated; only a tiny fraction went on to attend college. Though told with compassion and wry humor, the book is often difficult to read. Yet the ideal-shattering truths it reveals are important ones for teachers and administrators seeking to reform the urban education system in the United States. An unflinchingly honest account of one man's experiences with inner-city education.

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November 15, 2015

Boland, a 20-year veteran-executive for educational nonprofits and former admissions officer at Yale University and Fordham University, flirting with a mid-career change and desiring to be closer to the success stories the nonprofits he worked for achieved, took the plunge and became a certified teacher. After completing a master's program in teaching, Boland, awash in new-instructor jitters and idealism, found himself teaching history in room 314 in an inner-city New York high school with more than 30 ninth-grade students. This memoir is his gritty, self-reflective, sometimes humorous account of his first year. Boland's colorful descriptions let the reader share his experience, living his successes, his growing understanding of his craft and his students, his dissections of days that did not go well, and his efforts to maintain hope. The epilog summarizes his journey and includes specific advice to prospective teachers as well as a roadmap for educational reform. VERDICT Captivating, insightful, and instructive, Boland's first-person account and authentic struggle to understand the broken elements of the education system will appeal to students of education, educational leadership, and social work.--Jane Scott, Clark Lib., Univ. of Portland, OR

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2016
Boland's mother couldn't believe it: he was going to take an $80,000 pay cut to teach in a public school. As the development director for a nonprofit program that prepared minority children for stellar academic careers, Boland had a hand in plucking some outstanding students from their disadvantaged neighborhoods and into a new life. But he wanted to give back more directly and so made his radical announcement that he was changing careers. The year he then spent teaching in a tough New York City high school was harrowing and eye-opening. To a white man from Chelseaand a gay one at thatthe students could be brutal. But just as tough were the odds that these kids would get the support they needed from an overstuffed and underfunded system. Boland has a knack for capturing the stakes in seemingly small moments and the intensity of clashes between personalities. Ruthless in his evaluation of himself, his students, and the larger educational system, Boland provides a clear look at the challenges facing public schools today.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)