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Sam Pickering has been teaching, guiding, performing, and inspiring
for more than forty years. As a young English teacher at Montgomery
Bell Academy in Tennessee, his musings on literature and his
maverick pedagogy touched a student named Tommy Schulman, who later
wrote the screenplay for Dead Poets Society. Letters to a Teacher
is a welcome reminder that teaching is a joy and an art. In ten
graceful yet conversational letters addressed to teachers of all
types, Pickering shares compelling, funny, always elucidating
anecdotes from a lifetime in the classrooms of school and
universities. His priceless, homespun observations touch on topics
such as competition, curiosity, enthusiasm, and truth. More than a
how-to guide, Letters to a Teacher is an invitation into the hearts
and minds of an extraordinary educator and his students, and an
irresistible call to reflection for the teacher who knows he or she
must be compassionate, optimistic, respectful, firm, and above all
dynamic. This is an indispensable guide for teachers and laymen
alike.
Sweeping in and out of real and imagined places, Dreamtime
highlights the curious character of an unconventional teacher,
writer, traveler, husband, and father as he takes stock of his
multifaceted life. Sam Pickering--the inspiration for the main
character in Dead Poets Society--guides us on a journey through his
reflections on retirement, aging, gardening, and travel. He
describes the pleasures of domesticity, summers spent in Nova
Scotia, and the joy of sharing a simple life with his wife of
almost forty years.
"Life is a tiresome journey," Pickering muses, "and when a man
arrives at the end, he is generally out of breath." Although
Pickering is now more likely to shuffle than gallop, he isn't yet
out of breath, ideas, or ink. The refreshing and reflective
substance of these essays shines through a patina of wit in
Pickering's characteristically evocative and sincere prose. The
separate events depicted in Dreamtime invite the reader into
Pickering's personal experiences as well as into his viewpoints on
teaching and encounters with former students. In "Spring Pruning,"
Pickering describes the precarious tumor in his parathyroid and the
possibility of cancer affecting his daily life. In a refreshingly
honest tone Pickering says, "Moreover the funeral had become a
staple of chat, so much so I'd recently mulled having the raucous,
insolent ringer on my telephone replaced by the recording of taps."
Appealing to creative writers and readers who enjoy an adventurous
account of travels through life, Dreamtime accentuates the
lifestyle of a longtime master teacher whose experiences take him
from sunny days in the classroom to falling headfirst over a fence
after running a half-marathon. Unpredictable, spontaneous, and
always enlightening, Pickering's idiosyncratic approach and
companionable charm will delight anyone who shares his intoxication
with all the surprising treasures that might furnish a life with
happiness.
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