Have you ever felt like you have a moral obligation to put a book into the hands of every person you know? This is how I feel about The School, a memoir of a year as an English teacher in an Australian public school. 🏫 

Brendan James Murray's memoir vibrates with an empathy that defies the simplistic and dehumanising targets and statistics that seem to dominate public and political conversations about our profession. Murray tells stories. Some of them are about the moment of clarity when a student clicks with a piece of literature, many of them are about the human connection that exists within every classroom. 

I wish I could hand this book to every non-teacher in Australia with an opinion about how teaching should work based entirely upon their own experience as a student years ago, and certainly to every education department corporate officer who refer to students as "clients". 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 5 stars. Run don't walk.