The Battle for Room 314

My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School

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By Ed Boland

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$26.00

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$31.50 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around February 9, 2016. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

In this insightfully honest and moving memoir about the realities of teaching in an inner-city school, Ed Boland “smashes the dangerous myth of the hero-teacher [and] shows us how high the stakes are for our most vulnerable students” (Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black).

In a fit of idealism, Ed Boland left a twenty-year career as a non-profit executive to teach in a tough New York City public high school. But his hopes quickly collided headlong with the appalling reality of his students’ lives and a hobbled education system unable to help them. Freddy runs a drug ring for his incarcerated brother; Nee-cole is homeschooled on the subway by her brilliant homeless mother; Byron’s Ivy League dream is dashed because he is undocumented.

In the end, Boland isn’t hoisted on his students’ shoulders and no one passes AP anything. This is no urban fairy tale of at-risk kids saved by a Hollywood hero, but a searing indictment of schools that claim to be progressive but still fail their students.

Told with compassion, humor, and a keen eye, Boland’s story is sure to ignite debate about the future of American education and attempts to reform it.

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On Sale
Feb 9, 2016
Page Count
256 pages
ISBN-13
9781455560615

Ed Boland

About the Author

Ed Boland has dedicated his entire professional life to nonprofit causes as a fundraiser and communications expert. He has worked for predominantly educational institutions but also for arts and social service organizations. Boland was an Admissions Officer at his alma mater, Fordham, and later at Yale, and lived in China as a Princeton in Asia Fellow. He is now a senior administrator at the nation’s premier educational access program, which places gifted students of color at leading private schools. He lives in New York with his husband.

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