Reaction to Samuel Freedman's Small Victories

At one point or another, all future (and current) instructors must ask themselves the inevitable question: "What is my job as a teacher?" In Small Victories, author Samuel Freedman follows a teacher named Jessica Siegel as she answers this question for herself. For Jessica, being a teacher means more than simply teaching the material; it is something that carries on into her personal life, and into the lives of her students and colleagues. Jessica Siegel is the perfect example of a teacher who puts her all into her job. She crosses the student-teacher boundaries in the process, supplying her students with everything she feels they will need to enrich and better their lives. She also, however, demonstrates how important it is to set a line between her life as a teacher, and her life as Jessica Siegel.

Often, the students in Jessica's classes are underprivileged, poor, and often don't come from America and speak poor English. Many of them work part or even full time jobs. Some receive no nurture at home due to absent or simply neglectful parents; others have come from violent pasts. For many, education truly is their only way to get away from their nightmarish backgrounds, and start over. Jessica does not see her students as simply students - she reaches into their lives and attempts to see them each as a real person, living a real and often frightening life. She sees their need for a strict but nurturing figure, and takes on the role of a second mother, mentor, and confidant. She even says it herself: "Sometimes I think my job is being a professional mother" (15).