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The Back Row Is Listening

Name: The Back Row Is Listening
Price: 11.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.8 (4 reviews)
Author: Everett Lane

by Everett Lane · published via Smithbook

Essays from a Chicago high-school English classroom, about the students who seem not to care and turn out to hear everything.

★★★★★ 4.8 · 4 reviews 64 readers English

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★★★★☆

"Short essays, good for reading between other things. A couple of practical ideas I am already stealing."

han•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test · verified reader

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What it covers

teachingeducationChicagoreadingessays

About this book

Everett Lane has taught English in the same Chicago classroom for sixteen years. These essays are about what he learned there: the kid in the back row who never raised his hand and quoted Baldwin at graduation, the radiator that decided when class was over, the paperback library he built from yard sales, and the small daily choices that make a room a place where teenagers read. Funny, honest and practical, for teachers, parents and anyone who remembers a teacher who saw them.

Look inside · First chapter

Room 214 has thirty-two desks, one teacher’s desk with a drawer that sticks, and a radiator under the window that knocks three times every forty minutes like somebody wants to come in. My first year, I thought it was a student playing a joke. By the second year, I used it as a bell. The room faces east, so in the morning the sun comes straight in over the parking lot and lands on the back row. The kids who sit there squint through first period and put their hoods up, and for most of my first yea

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Product details

Title: The Back Row Is Listening
Author: Everett Lane
Format: Digital · browser reader
Language: English
Category: Educational & Technical · Biography & Memoir
Delivery: In seconds · to your e-mail
Access: Lifetime · any device
Publisher: Independent · via Smithbook

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Reviews

4.8

★★★★★

4 reviews

5★3

4★1

3★0

2★0

1★0

★★★★☆ · han•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/30/2026

Warm and useful

Short essays, good for reading between other things. A couple of practical ideas I am already stealing.

★★★★★ · gwe•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/29/2026

Made me call my old teacher

The Baldwin chapter got me. I found my tenth-grade English teacher online and wrote to her.

★★★★★ · fel•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/29/2026

Every teacher should read this

I teach seventh grade in Ohio and I underlined half of it. The essay about the late pass is perfect.

★★★★★ · ida•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/29/2026

Honest about the hard days

He does not pretend every day works. That is why the good days hit so hard.

About the author

Everett Lane

I have taught sophomore and senior English at the same Chicago public high school for sixteen years, in the same classroom with the same radiator that knocks like somebody wants to come in. I started writing these essays on the Red Line, on my phone, because the stories from school were piling up faster than I could tell them at dinner. I believe every teenager is a reader who has not met the right book yet, and I have a shelf of beat-up paperbacks in Room 214 to prove it. I live in Hyde Park with my wife, our two kids and a stack of ungraded essays that never gets shorter.

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