A review by pootler
Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy

4.0

I'm a big fan of Clanchy and what she does. I was completely unaware of the controversy surrounding this book until I came back to Goodreads to mark it as 'read'. I'd wanted to give it five stars for the ideas, stories, and writing, but there was something vaguely off about how she wrote about some of the children that had bothered me. It came into focus in the later chapters, where she talks about girls and their shape and weight and what they eat in a such a derogatory, out of touch, and judgemental way that I ended the book feeling a bit disappointed. I wondered if she'd grown to really understand or empathise with any of her students at all over the years. Biases and prejudices are hard to shift, even when we work hard to rid ourselves of them, as I'm sure she has done. Perhaps talking about how a fat girl eats too many biscuits is still so widely socially acceptable that Clanchy is unaware of how awful these passages are.

Clanchy's writing style is enjoyable and the amazing things she has helped young people achieve remain profoundly impressive and hopeful. I still enjoyed it enough to not want to put it down, and so it still gets 4 stars for the good things in it.