The Emergency Teacher.

THE EMERGENCY TEACHER. Christina Asquith. Washington, DC: West Parley Press, 2005. 272 pp. $19.95. At first glance, The Emergency Teacher appears to be another Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds, in which a new teacher encounters a class of unruly students and cleverly tames them. In The Emergency Teacher, Christina Asquith does talk about her problems as a new teacher with no certification or training; however, she focuses on forces outside the classroom, especially inept administrators and their impact on teacher retention and student performance in the Philadelphia school where she taught. For example, she describes bureaucratic roadblocks, as evident in the situations in which some teachers hired before school started were not in their classrooms for two weeks because they were still "downtown being processed." On the political level, Asquith notes that "those in power were more satisfied with appearing as though students were learning than actually taking the steps necessary to teach something." Asquith's principal bragged publicly about her ESL classes, but failed to mention that she had no ESL teacher and so the students in those classes drew pictures every day. The principal's slogan, Failure Is Not an Option, was accomplished by requiring teachers to pass all students.

Asquith also pointed to difficult working conditions. The building in which she taught was over 80 years old and much of it had been condemned. When school began, she had no supplies and no books. The books she finally received were in tatters and outdated. By the middle of the year, over nine teachers in her school had quit and had not been replaced. Their students were either put in other teachers' classes or allowed to roam the halls, where they destroyed property and attacked other students. Asquith was forced to keep her door locked to protect her students.

Although new to the teaching profession, with only a few days of "training," Asquith was totally on her own in the classroom, without adequate support to do her job. Since most teachers in her school were either incompetent or struggling, no one could help her adjust to teaching. Finally, she was able to find two teachers whose students seemed to be learning. On Friday afternoons, over several beers at the local pub, they gave her advice that kept her class from descending into total chaos.

The Emergency Teacher is, in many ways, a depressing book in which the author's dilemma consists of whether she should remain in a dysfunctional situation and fail, or refuse to be a part of the problem and quit. By the end of the school year, 25 percent of Philadelphia's newly hired teachers, including Asquith, had resigned, "demolished to the point of paralysis." The conditions under which Asquith worked are not atypical. In a political climate that encourages people to "simply walk off the streets and into the classroom," this book is important for all educators to read. Reviewed by Barbara Moore, Undergraduate Teacher Education Program Coordinator, Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, MS