Library Assistant Leona Anthony recommends Lessons from My Teachers: Preschool to the Present by Sarah Ruhl.
Say the word “teacher,” and what often comes to mind is an elementary or high school teacher. In Lessons from My Teachers: Preschool to the Present, author Sarah Ruhl reminds us that teachers are everywhere and not just in classrooms. Our first teachers could be a mother, father, grandmother, or other family member. As we navigate the education system, we become students not only of one teacher but of a team that may include music teachers, counselors, and vice-principals.
Ruhl shares stories of an elementary school art teacher who gave her an assignment she hated and a school principal who once seemed fearsome.
A teacher, knowingly or unknowingly, teaches something of value that could be applied in the moment or retained for a lifetime.
Friends, spouses, and even complete strangers can provide teaching moments and share wisdom. Each chapter in this 216-page collection of essays is between three and five pages long and easily identifiable. As a professional playwright and professor of theater, Ruhl weaves together lessons she’s learned from a wide range of individuals—including her own critics, her stage-actress mother, and her life as a wife and mother of three living in Brooklyn during the 2020 pandemic.
Ruhl provides readers with examples of the value of writing, ways to write more, and a list of reasons to keep writing.
She also describes how theater teaches presence and how that practice helped her address and heal from physical and psychological wounds brought on by Lyme disease she unknowingly contracted decades ago. Finally, Ruhl devotes several chapters to sealing in knowledge by teaching the next generation. She explores when a student transitions into a teacher and when a teacher becomes a student again—sharing wisdom to nourish and complete the circle of life.
