Mount Pleasant: My Journey from Creating a Billion-Dollar Company to Teaching at a Struggling Public High School
Where to buy Mount Pleasant: My Journey from Making a Billion-Dollar Company to Teaching at a Struggling Public High School books online?
- ISBN13: 9781591843450
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A Silicon Valley entrepreneur takes on the challenge of a lifetime: teaching in one of California’s toughest high schools.
Entrepreneur Steve Poizner has run a billion dollar company, but the greatest challenge of his life was the year he spent teaching twelfth graders at San Jose’s Mt. Pleasant High School. On many days, like the one when a student’s boyfriend was arrested for bank robbery, his managerial and capitalist skills seemed beside the point. But on others, they helped him demonstrate how exciting it is to learn. Playing Jeopardy with the class and inviting speakers into the classroom, Poizner motivated his students by expanding their horizons far beyond their high school’s walls.
Steve Poizner is currently a candidate for administrator of California and on the verge of apt a household name. But this is a memoir of a riveting personal journey, not a point-by-point account of his vision for his state. Poizner writes, “Regularly I came to question myself one question: What exactly are you doing here? As it turns out, I was getting one hell of an education.” Mt Pleasant is ultimately a success tale, as Poizner wins Rookie Teacher of the Year honors and, more vital, ensures that all his students graduate.
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I just got back from the Discussion / Book Signing for Mount Pleasant at the Eastridge mall. The kids from Mount Pleasant were out in full force protesting this book. They want Steve Poizner to make an apology and said that the last half of this book is all fiction. I was surprised at the rage directed his way from the students.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
It must be some excellent eeeish, because Mt. Pregnant has gotta be one of the worst schools in the state (a state that likely has the worst schools in the country). I know. I live right across the street and have a litter of siblings who have or are attending. This book merely sheds a small light on something that many locals have known for years, but have been worried to prompt because of dread of lowering property values and such.
Look: the vast majority of the students who attend Mt. Pregnant are morons. They’re apathetic, bone idle, obviously delusional, and many are in gangs. In fact, their protests only reinforce their stupidity. Finally, somebody has the cajones to speak out on one of California’s worst issues, and the kids just want to look at the situation through rose-tinted shades?! Puzzling. Well, pull ‘em off!
Now that the school has been placed bottom the microscope, maybe it’ll receive more (or better) funding from the state. And now maybe, just maybe, there will be animal crackers up in the daycare. To anyone who thinks that this is an unfair characterization of the school, please respond with something more than, “Mt. Pregant is the worst? Ya…if ur narrowminded enough to judge that there arnt any additional struggling high schools in California.”
Just place down whatever you are ingesting, and please question yourselves: why doesn’t Mt. Pregnant get any significant number of students in top schools (or any colleges outside of the JC system, for that matter)? Why do so many of our students have children that they can’t possibly afford? Why can’t so many of our students even speak proper English? And, worse, why do so many TEACHERS reciprocate the attitudes of students.
I sure hope the situation isn’t hopeless, but a book doesn’t seem like it’s going to drastically change what I have witnessed for the past 20 years. What needs to change is the attitudes of students. They need to stop whining and take some responsibility for their abject failures. I mean, school pride is cool and all, but it’s better when you’ve really place in work to get there (i.e., COLLEGE). So quit being lame, get off of that hater juice, and focus on elevating your game. A name “dissing” you damn high school is so insignificant it makes the mind boggle.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Mt. Pleasant is a struggling high school? Sure, if you’re narrow minded enough to judge that there’s no additional high schools in California that are struggling as well. You’re singling out a single school, building all-purpose statements that perhaps have a slither of truth; but, your wording and descriptions attack everyone that as ever been linked with or will associate with this school. As a ex- MP student, I can honestly say that I have NEVER dealt with the struggles and issues you stated.
I am appalled by how ignorant your statements are and what is written in this book. You taught there for how long, to be able to have enough basis to make such a statement?? Certainly not long enough.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This is the one to suggest to your book club, give your friends for their birthdays and quote to your congressman.
When Silicon Valley entrepreneur and California gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner does something, it would seem that he does it right. Mount Pleasant is his tale of the year he spent teaching an American Government class in a rough-and-tumble San Jose high school. This was no Mr. Huge Shot photo op for Poizner. He rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
All kids should be lucky enough to have such a determined, compassionate teacher. And all politicians and educational policy makers should be required to read such a smart, observant guy’s take on what we need to do to ensure that children place high school with an education, not just a diploma.
The late master teacher Jaime Escalante is quoted as regularly commenting, “The key to my success with youngsters is a very simple and time-honored tradition: hard work for teacher and student alike.” My bet is that he would very much have approved of what Steve Poizner has to say.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
In this brilliant and honest book Steve Poizner tells the truth about his experience in another low-slung school in California, and the powers that be do a huffy refuge. What a fine lesson in civic discourse to teach a group of students. Of course, not all of California’s public school failures have to do with the immigration from Mexico (officially authorized and illegal) of a peasant class of people who don’t speak English at home; but I’m here to tell you that the USA had best wake up and look squarely at the facts. Mexicans who have crossed our border over the course of the past thirty years, as well as immigrants from additional countries, have turned our public school system inside out and upside down. Not only do we spend more to accommodate these people in our classrooms; but as well we expect our teachers to bend, twist, and otherwise tie themselves in knots in order to court failure. That is *not* to say that immigration, per se, is terrible for the USA (which is, after all, a land of immigrants), but it is to say that if we fail to admit to the effects of sudden and unregulated immigration on our schools, then our schools will continue to deteriorate. As a public entity, our school system has small choice: Tell the truth and you shoot yourself in the property tax foot. Too terrible that Mr. Poizner seems unlikely to win appointment, because I would have loved voting for the man.
Anthony V. Toscano
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5