Any one who teaches or cares about education or wants a good book to read should read Teacher by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Many years ago, in New Zealand, Warner started teaching Maori children at around the 4th Grade level. (The Maori are to New Zealand what Native Americans are in this country. The great operatic soprano, Kiri Te Kenawa is Maori.) The children were very "behind in their reading". Warner decided that part of the problem was the reading book, a kind of New Zealand "Dick and Jane" text, about a middle-class Enlgish-style life which the Maori children couldn't understand and didn't care much about. So Warner hit upon a clever idea which can be used, in variations, by any teacher WHO KNOWS AND CARES AND DARES.

Warner would hold a "word auction" and ask the children to bid. She would hold up a lettered strip for, say, "dawn", and ask, "How much am I bid for this?" To win the bidding, a child must promise so many words (say, 500) in an essay using the word "dawn". So, Maori children, "behind in reading", were soon writing more essays than our high school seniors!

Warner collected these into a "primer" and used them for the next class of students, to motivate them in reading. Of course, a story might tell about Daddy coming home drunk and beating up Mommy. But the children could understand that -- not the amenities of New Zealand "Dick and Jane".

The essay writing had helped that first class of Warner's. Now this "home-made" reading primer helped succeeding classes and they were no longer "behind in the reading".

As the saying goes, "No good deed goes unpunished!" A government educational inspector came around, read this "Primer", was horrified, confiscated it and burned it, insisting that the original text be re-instated.

Sylvia Townsend Warner resigned and wrote Teacher and X the story of a Maori boy.

I read Teacher before I took up professional teaching, and its example guided my work and my relations with my students.