With its chuckle-worthy title, Miss Gullible’s Classroom Travels by Verena Ferrant Harp is a refreshingly honest teaching memoir that refuses to romanticize the profession. Drawing on thirty-five years of classroom experience in rural Louisiana, it shows what really happens behind the classroom doorm: the chaos, heartbreak, and the humor. It’s a memoir accessible to anyone interested in education, reminding me quite a bit of Roald Dahl’s memoirs and their ability to straddle adult writing with more child-friendly storytelling.
The memoir is basically composed of the author’s experiences in the American public schooling system, good and bad. As she writes, Harp had a “perfect plan” for her first teaching job. Everyone would learn. Students wouldn’t steal, throw up, or be messy. All three happened in her first week. The cutest kid stole a quarter, his sister puked, and another precious one didn’t quite make it to the bathroom. This gap between teacher training and classroom reality becomes the thread connecting every chapter, as Harp chronicles her journey from idealistic “Miss Gullible” (a nickname she gave herself for those early assumptions) to exhausted veteran to reflective retiree.
What makes Harp’s approach particularly fun to read is her willingness to show both the hilarious and the heartbreaking without sanitizing either. The memoir opens at 3 a.m. with a student prank call offering to deliver “two white jackasses.” Harp’s half-asleep comeback, “Sure, I’ll accept. But only if you’re one of them!”, sets a tone of exhausted-teacher humor that many will find enjoyable. When an anecdote is given in this memoir, it’ll often make you laugh out loud. The “SEX notebook” incident is a perfect example: a sixth-grader who usually refuses to work suddenly writes furiously, and Harp is thrilled until she sees he’s written “SEX, SEX, SEX” all over the page. When asked about it, he replies, “I saw it on the SRA test. It means whether you’re a boy or a girl.”
As someone who can’t claim to know anything about teaching young kids, this book was the perfect way to get an insight into what the job is like. One section that stood out was the meticulously documented “ten-minute coffee break” that isn’t really a break at all. Harp walks us minute-by-minute through ten minutes where teachers supervise hundreds of students flooding hallways, wait for coffee to finish dripping, and manage half a cup before the bell rings. Over twenty-one years, she calculated: 2,700 lunches with no actual break and 2,700 stressful “coffee breaks.” The year she experienced twenty of the stress-related ailments on her list (headaches, migraines, high blood pressure, insomnia, depression, and more) was when she realized she might not survive if she continued. Apparently, three colleagues needed sabbaticals that same year, and one never returned.
I found the practical classroom strategies pretty useful. Harp’s solution to pencil-dropping disruptions, having students deliberately throw their pencils before lessons begin, is creative problem-solving you won’t find in teacher training programs. The conference chapters offer some funny moments, such as parents who are in complete denial of their child’s behaviour. Nonetheless, Harp’s treatment of her students is affectionate and and at times borderline touching. J.B., the gentle giant football player who told everyone “She’s going to teach me to read” with a huge grin. Phillip, whose dad came to school in a suit to help with math, and cute little Sheila. These portraits are great fun to read.
The memoir takes an increasingly evangelical turn in its final chapters. Harp argues that preparing students for earthly life isn’t enough, they need preparation for eternity. She shares her childhood conversion story involving her dog Shadow’s death, then provides the ABCs of salvation: Admit you sin, Believe Jesus died for you, Confess God is in charge. She’s transparent that these are “the ABCs we are not to teach” in public schools, but teaches them anyway in this memoir. Obviously, your enjoyment of these chapters will depend on your own religion perusasion.
My only complaints are I feel the prose occasionally needs another round of editing (more commas would help with flow). I also simply wanted more. The memoir is quite short, especially with Joe McKeever’s warm illustrations taking up space. Also, the book seems slightly confused on it’s target audience, seemingly written for both kids and adult. Nonetheless, these are minor quibbles in a great little book. The illustrations are lovely additions, and Harp’s conversational style makes it easy to keep reading. Small touches like providing both original fourth-grade spelling and translating it to normal English made me chortle.
Final verdict: An honest, imperfect, but ultimately charming teaching memoir. Harp offers practical classroom wisdom alongside unflinching accounts of what teaching costs. Despite its brevity, it delivers an interesting look about a career spent in the classroom. For fans of pedagogical memoirs, Roald Dahl and authors like Ken Robinson and Paulo Freire.
You can get your copy of “Miss Gullible’s Classroom Travels” here!
