Preface: You are not alone -- Do you have what it takes to become a teacher? : a quiz -- If people talked to other professionals the way they talk to teachers -- How I came to teach preschool -- Other vehicular styles of parenting -- All of your children are broken -- It's cooking day at preschool! -- A letter from your child's teacher, on winter holiday gifts -- Middle school parent-teacher conference night, in internet headlines -- How I imagined my teachers conversed about me when I was thirteen -- Memo to parents and legal guardians : our updated schedule for spirit days at Mapledale Middle School -- How I came to teach high school -- The unspoken rules of the teachers' lounge -- An alphabet for the school at the end of Beach 112th -- Student essay checklist -- A conclusive ranking of the students at Hogwarts by order of how much i would enjoy teaching them -- Dear parents : we're going with Hamilton-centered curriculum this year! -- Somewhat more free -- Random school motto generator -- The other class -- A field guide to spotting bad teachers -- Paulie -- It's your twenty-minute lunch period! -- To Stan, with love -- Field trip rules -- Teachers reveal the holiday gifts they actually want -- I'm going to make it through the last faculty meeting of the year by "yes, and..."-ing it -- All part of a plan, maybe, or, how I came to be a professor -- If Bruce Springsteen wrote about adjuncts -- On adjuncting -- Classic college movies updated for the adjunct era -- A brief list of what students have called me -- On student evaluations -- My ideal student evaluation questionnaire -- Worst, weirdest, and best -- A short essay by a student who googled the professor instead of reading Jane Eyre -- Moral quandaries for professors -- I see you. -- An incomplete list of sources I have seen plagiarized -- I know you're asleep right now, but please get back to me ASAP -- Sports analogies for academics -- "Why did I get a B?" An answer in four fables -- Taught -- Everyone who attends must converse -- My last pieces of good advice for teachers -- How I imagine retirement from teaching will be at seventy-two

"This hilarious, inspirational, and wise collection of personal essays and humor from a longtime educator explores all the joys, challenges, and absurdities of being a teacher, following in the footsteps of such classics as Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire, The Courage to Teach, and Up the Down Staircase. Shannon Reed did not want to be a teacher, but now, after twenty years of working with children from preschool to college, there's nothing she'd rather be. In essays full of humor, heart, and wit, she illuminates the highs and lows of a job located at the intersection of youth and wisdom. Bringing you into the trenches of this most important and stressful career, she rolls her eyes at ineffectual administrators, weeps with her students when they experience personal tragedies, complains with her colleagues about their ridiculously short lunchbreaks, and presents the parent-teacher conference from the other side of the tiny table. From dealing with bullies and working with special needs students to explaining the unwritten rules of the teacher's lounge, Why Did I Get a B? is full of as much humor and heart as the job itself"--