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jesslw's review
5.0
This book was so powerful and heartbreaking. I think it is rare when you read something and realize that you will never look at the world around you in quite the same way. I will be processing this book for a long time. I would highly recommend this to everyone!
listen_learn's review
I might come back to write a real, detailed review of this after processing some more, or I might not.
But if you like authors who honestly grapple with heavy topics like race, crime, caring, and the powers of choice vs. circumstance then I would recommend it.
But if you like authors who honestly grapple with heavy topics like race, crime, caring, and the powers of choice vs. circumstance then I would recommend it.
kchiappone's review
5.0
So rarely have I cried while reading a book. This was so expertly written, so well researched, and so touching. This is an enthusiastic recommendation for anyone I know.
iphios's review
5.0
The moment I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. The beauty of Kuo's writing is that it is honest. It doesn't aim to inspire, it aims to make us think---consider our own idealism and the world's reality. This was very human, there was no great heroic act. There was no victim and saviour. There was friendship---that sense of equal footing is what made me love this book, a reciprocation that the teacher and the student may switch roles.
I read this book in one sitting, scrolling through my ebook with a speed I didn't imagine I had. Writing this, I had just finished reading it and wished I had a hard copy (unfortunately it is not available in my country) that I can flip through again and again, crease pages and ponder over the beauty of it all.
I saw once Patrick. I had a few Ms. Kuo in my growing years. I had someone introduce literature and poetry to me that awaken my soul. I too am a teacher and I too struggled to find what it means to be a real teacher, modeling my other teachers and eventually learning from my own students how to be their teacher---to care and just be there.
There is so much that I can say about this book, maybe sometime soon I'd be able to articulate everything, but for now, all I can say that this book is beautiful in it humanity. It is tender, it transcends race, gender, background, and education---it, to me, highlights what relationships are and how much of it is in seeing that we are equal and in seeing that allows us to see people, to build a relationship and to respond to that relationship with sincerity and acceptance. Allowing the unfolding of the gift that could only exist between people, a change that exist not because one is an influence to the other, rather than both are teachers, both are students and both care.
I read this book in one sitting, scrolling through my ebook with a speed I didn't imagine I had. Writing this, I had just finished reading it and wished I had a hard copy (unfortunately it is not available in my country) that I can flip through again and again, crease pages and ponder over the beauty of it all.
I saw once Patrick. I had a few Ms. Kuo in my growing years. I had someone introduce literature and poetry to me that awaken my soul. I too am a teacher and I too struggled to find what it means to be a real teacher, modeling my other teachers and eventually learning from my own students how to be their teacher---to care and just be there.
There is so much that I can say about this book, maybe sometime soon I'd be able to articulate everything, but for now, all I can say that this book is beautiful in it humanity. It is tender, it transcends race, gender, background, and education---it, to me, highlights what relationships are and how much of it is in seeing that we are equal and in seeing that allows us to see people, to build a relationship and to respond to that relationship with sincerity and acceptance. Allowing the unfolding of the gift that could only exist between people, a change that exist not because one is an influence to the other, rather than both are teachers, both are students and both care.
beatniksafari's review
4.0
A moving memoir with a setting (the Mississippi River Delta) and a topic (education) that are both close to my heart. Michelle Kuo doesn't pretend to have all the answers, but a sincere wish to explore the questions: Can the right teacher, the right book, the right situation, change a life? How do our educational and judicial systems support - or fail - our most vulnerable young people? What choices have the biggest impact?
runningonwords415's review
5.0
This is a must read for all teachers. Where “Freedom Writers” lacks institutional and economic awareness, “Reading with Patrick” does not shy away from controversial, yet normalized, topics such as race and judicial/educational injustice. Michelle patience and resilience with the toughest of students should be a guidebook to all first year teachers - and even experienced ones - for how to reach your students hearts before their minds.
terrimarshall's review
4.0
I enjoyed this book about a woman who was a Harvard graduate who spent 2 years teaching in the Mississippi Delta area of Arkansas through the Teach for America program. Patrick was one of her students who ends up incarcerated for murder, and she returns to the Delta after attending Harvard Law to teach again and continue a weekly relationship with him in jail through education. Patrick turns out to be quite a smart guy with quite a gift for writing. It was an eye-opening lesson about the sad situation where people are not able to get out of the poverty they live in through lack of access to good education and lack of opportunity due to the place they happen to be born.