We Don't Need Another Hero

In his latest book, bestselling author Gregory Michie critiques high-stakes schooling and provides a powerful alternative vision of teaching as a humanistic enterprise, students as multidimensional beings, and schools as spaces where young people can imagine and become, not just “achieve.” Drawing on his experiences over the past two decades as a classroom teacher, community volunteer, researcher, and teacher educator in Chicago’s public schools, Michie offers compelling accounts of teaching and learning in urban America. Mindful of the complex realities educators face, he portrays urban schools as they really are: sites of struggle, hope, and possibility.

At a time when others relentlessly trumpet a competitive, data-driven, corporatized notion of education, the essays in We Don't Need Another Hero challenge the dominant narratives of failing urban schools and bad teachers. Like Michie’s now classic Holler If You Hear Me, this book gives much-needed hope to new and seasoned teachers alike. It is also an important resource for school administrators, policymakers, parents, and anyone who wants to better understand what is really happening in American schools.

Gregory Michie is a public school teacher in Chicago, and senior research associate at the Center for Policy Studies and Social Justice at Concordia University, Chicago. He is the bestselling author of Holler If You Hear Me, Second Edition, and See You When We Get There

“An accessible, deeply-engaging, and at times humorous text that illustrates the realities of teaching and learning in today’s urban schools.”

—TC Record

“There is no writer working today who captures the excruciating complexity of a life in teaching with as much grace and clarity as Gregory Michie.”
—William Ayers, educator and bestselling author

“Greg Michie is right: We don’t need another hero. The heroes are already there: They are our students, as well as the teachers and administrators who have a passion for justice. Those are the voices we must heed.”
\—From the Foreword by Sonia Nieto, professor emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“Gregory Michie’s experiences in the classroom and his purview as a teacher educator make this a good peek into the thoughts of a man willing to challenge the current notions of education reform. Rather than sit in frustration over the current tenor surrounding these so-called reforms, Michie seeks meaningful progress and solutions.”
– Jose Luis Vilson, NYC public school lead teacher and writer at TheJoseVilson.com

“We Don't Need Another Hero is a big book about the small, valorous, transforming acts of teaching. For Michie, teaching is a potentially world-changing act, but on a small scale, through the acts of caring, learning, and reflecting with others on the implications of our work and its simple yet profound core. In these essays, the teacher is at the center of the democratic project."
—Kirsten Olson, founding board member of IDEA (Institute of Democratic Education in America) and bestselling author of Wounded by School

2012 Society of Professors of Education Book Award