To Teach

According to Publishers Weekly, “This fascinating and, yes, educational book will certainly be of interest to teachers, but it will also teach, inspire, and entertain anyone else who picks it up.”
This graphic novel brings to life William Ayers’s bestselling memoir To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher, Fourth Edition. From Ayers’s early days teaching kindergarten, readers follow this renowned educational theorist on his “voyage of discovery and surprise.”

When first published in 2010, this graphic novel was immediately embraced as an accessible and imaginative introduction to teaching. The author and illustrator have meticulously updated their popular book to coincide with a new fourth edition of William Ayers’s classic memoir To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. The expanded second edition of this book adds a coda to each chapter that addresses our changing world, including the global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the heightened politicization of teaching as a profession, and the continuing effects of mass incarceration. Once again featuring the evocative and wry drawings of Ryan Alexander-Tanner, this dynamic book offers an innovative way to address the problems and virtues of a career in education. These illustrated stories remind us how curiosity, a sense of adventure, and a healthy dose of reflection can help us all learn.

Book Features:

• An alternative medium for teaching theory and practice that can be more engaging for a broad audience than a standard text.
• An irreverent and humanitarian approach to addressing the complexities of education in today’s society.
• An examination of contentious issues done with an open mind and an open heart.
• An illustrated invitation to teaching as it could and should be.

William Ayers is Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired). His books include To Teach, Fourth Edition, About Becoming a Teacher, and Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World. Ryan Alexander-Tanner is an illustrator, comics artist, and educator who collaborates with individuals and organizations to adapt specialized content into illustrated narratives that are accessible to a broad audience (www.ohyesverynice.com).

“The beauty of To Teach: The Journey, in Comics is that its creation (and recreation as a new edition) embodies the way we learn, teach, and make sense of the world together. Just as this book does, we hold both words and images together; we hold past, present, and future, not as separate moments, but within us all at once, informing how we relate to one another and the work at hand. This new edition activates all our senses and our full humanity.”
—Adam Bush, president, College Unbound

"With this expanded second edition, Bill Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner artfully invite us to consider how teaching can and should intervene in the polycrises of this political moment. Read this book and see how comics can brilliantly interweave life stories, educational philosophy, and artwork in ways that stir us toward inquiry, humility, joy, and justice."
—Kevin Kumashiro, educational consultant and author of Surrendered: Why Progressives are Losing the Biggest Battles in Education

“One of my favorite books about teaching, ever, of all time. Both timely and timeless, To Teach: The Journey, in Comics urges us to recenter love and wonder in our lives as educators and learners.”
—Eve L. Ewing, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies, University of Chicago

“In a world where the visual brings us multiple dimensions of understanding, rendering To Teach as a graphic novel (again) is a master stroke. It reminds us of the many nuances of teaching and learning and the sheer joy of an enterprise that this era seems determined to crush. Thank you, Bill Ayers, for reminding us of the love and light called teaching!"
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

“Once again, Bill Ayers and Ryan Alexander-Tanner have made the important decision to provide a material path to effective teaching in a world that seeks to kill our criticality and determination. Their commitments to put their reflections and interpretations in the form of a graphic novel makes teaching in tumultuous times look a little less daunting.”
—David Stovall, professor of educational policy studies and African American studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Based on his life experiences as a teacher, parent, activist, and scholar, Bill Ayers’s To Teach is a classic book that shows us how to embrace the heart and humanity of one of the most loving practices of all: teaching. This new edition of To Teach: The Journey, in Comics holds the same spirit of care that Ayers brings to everything he does, helping guide us toward more just and liberatory educational futures. This book will help everyone understand education better.”
—Wayne Au, editor, Rethinking Schools, and dean of the University of Washington School of Educational Studies

“This new edition of the graphic novel creatively brings Ayers’s powerful stories to the present by adding the perspective of Quinn, one of Ayers’s former students, who is now a teacher navigating the challenges of the pandemic, new technology, students ensnared in the criminal legal system, and the polarized politics of our time. An innovative and accessible must-read for educators, Alexander-Tanner's illustrations engross the reader in the multifaceted worlds of students and teachers as Ayers debunks harmful myths about teaching, elevates the humanity of students and teachers, and shares practical and philosophical lessons on how to embrace learning as an act of love.”
—Elizabeth Todd-Breland, associate professor of history, University of Illinois Chicago