Thank You, Teacher: Grateful Students Tell the Stories of the Teachers Who Changed Their Lives - Hardcover

Bruce Holbert earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he held a Teaching Writing Fellowship. His second novel, The Hour of Lead, was a Kirkus Best Book for 2014 and won the 2015 Washington State Book Award for fiction. Bruce has worked for thirty years as a high school teacher.

Holly Holbert graduated from Eastern Washington University with a degree in geography and elementary education. She and Bruce met there and were married in 1985. They have three children and live on six acres overlooking Long Lake on the Spokane River.

Great teachers make all the difference in one’s journey to self-realization. I would never have become the writer I am, such as I am, without their incalculable encouragement. So this tribute to the noble, underacknowledged importance of the teaching profession cannot be recommended more heartily.”
Alex Shoumatoff, editor of DispatchesFromTheVanishingWorld.com and contributor to Vanity Fair and the New Yorker

From the Book

Like those of most good teachers, her most important lessons didn’t come from a book. She taught me how to be a human being, to have dignity, and that it was never appropriate to whine or complain.”
Maya Angelou

It all could have been different for me and would have been, if not for whatever it is that makes an older person busy person, tired person, finite person turn toward a young person and say, in whatever way is needed, Of course you can. Why not? Give it a try.’”
George Saunders

When I was a child of nine, I met the first great person in my life. I would forever use her as the needle of my moral compass, of my never-ending passion to learn, and of my work ethic. That person was my teacher.”
Gene Simmons

His tangents the fascinating ruminations between the lines of the assigned texts, the stuff we’d never find in a book kept our interest in a way that no prospectus could. We left his classroom not merely with notebooks full of jottings but with hearts excited and inspired.”
Jerry Spinelli

Teaching is an act of faith. Life too. You do the best you know how. And you hope that it makes a difference. And when you get that opportunity, you thank the people who made a difference in your life. This is where the meaning comes from.”
Jess Walter

To this day I remember her kindness, her patience, and the enthusiasm that she mustered each and every day.”
Daisy Martinez