Lessons Learned and Cherished: The Teacher Who Changed My Life

by Deborah Roberts

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Everyone knows a teacher who made a difference in their life. The essays in this book say what many of us feel about that special person who first believed in us.

A giftable collection of essays from celebrity contributors celebrating the great work of teachers or a teacher they admire, curated by ABC News journalist Deborah Roberts. Contributors include Oprah Winfrey, Jenna Bush Hager, Robin Roberts, Brooke Shields, Octavia Spencer, Rachael Ray, Misty Copeland, and more.

Everyone can name a teacher who had an impact on their life. Educators not only open our minds to new ideas, but they also help us recognize our potential and our passions. However, rarely do they get credit for the life-changing work they do, and often teachers have no idea how their work can influence a student all the way into adulthood.

In Lessons Learned and Cherished: The Teacher Who Changed My Life, award-winning ABC News journalist Deborah Roberts curates a collection of essays and musings from celebrity friends and colleagues alike that share how teachers changed them, imparted life lessons, and helped them get to where they are today.

The author has made a donation to DonorsChoose (DonorsChoose.org), a non-profit that encourages people to empower public school teachers by funding their classroom resources.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781368095051
Publisher:	Disney Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/02/2023
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	73,844
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Deborah Roberts is an award-winning ABC News senior national affairs correspondent for 20/20, Nightline, Good Morning America, and World News Tonight with David Muir. A media veteran, Roberts is a highly respected journalist who has traveled the world for her reporting. She has also served as a substitute anchor for Good Morning America, World News Weekend, and 20/20, as well as a guest co-host on The View.

Roberts has been awarded multiple Emmy Awards for her international and national coverage of world events, including her poignant reporting on an Ethiopian American woman’s emotional journey back to her African village to discover her long-lost mother. In 2021, Roberts was awarded a Peabody Award for the 20/20 special “Say Her Name: Breonna Taylor,” which featured her extensive reporting on Taylor’s tragic case.

Roberts’ long-form reports on 20/20 have consistently produced extraordinary narratives, such as an intimate profile of former first lady Michelle Obama and former first daughter Ivanka Trump. She was also part of the historic coverage of the inauguration of former President Barack Obama.

Roberts is the author of Been There, Done That: Family Wisdom for Modern Times, a book written with her husband, Al Roker. She currently resides in New York City with her family.

Editorial Reviews

2023-06-01
A procession of well-known people recall a teacher who recognized their worth.

“This is not so much a book as it is a love letter to teachers from those who cherish them,” writes ABC News journalist Roberts in the afterword. Almost all the pieces say about the same thing—that specific, targeted praise from a teacher, what we now call “feeling seen,” can be life-changing. There are a few essays that have a slightly different story, often where a teacher's harshness or apparent cruelty had a positive result. Some of the material was constructed from interviews, so that even those attributed to writers like Ann Patchett and Brit Bennett are not particularly well written, and some are very slight indeed. Oprah's comment —“I bow at and to the altar of great teachers. Because without them I would not be the who of who I am”—is an indicator of the general rhetorical level. (Though she does name a few teachers, Oprah claims her eponymous show as her “greatest teacher.”) Perhaps the most intriguing element of the book is the impact of a teacher's appearance on young minds: “Mrs. Dee was a no-nonsense, curvy white woman who favored pants over skirts and dresses”; “She was always well dressed in a suit or a dress, never pants. Her face was powdered, and she always wore lipstick”; “She was a strong, dark-skinned, regal Black woman with a natural, tight afro who was always draped in a flowing African garment.” The many teachers who will doubtless receive this book as a gift will appreciate it, particularly after the pandemic left them “beleaguered and demoralized.” Some of the other contributors include Spike Lee, Brooke Shields, Lucy Liu, Anna Quindlen, Al Roker, Sunny Hostin, Rachael Ray, and Vanessa Williams. The author offers multiple tributes.

A well-intentioned but mediocre collection.

Kirkus Reviews