Like a Diary: Stories of a Teacher

The name of Marina Aromshtam on the cover is a guarantee of proper upbringing for adults. Each of her books is a thread connecting the world of a child and the world of an adult. How to speak, how to teach, how to explain, how to correct—and yet, a whole million more how...

There are no ready-made recipes here—just the simple life of one person for whom pedagogy isn’t empty words and not dry textbooks.

Her children are the most ordinary. They live in neighboring apartments, in neighboring houses. Someone is from a single-parent family, someone else is doing well (but even for that, sometimes there’s shame), someone boasts too much, someone interrupts and pushes ahead, someone steals a teacher’s wallet and swears they didn’t do it—yet someone tries to catch the culprit. In general, the most ordinary kids who somehow got a lucky ticket and ended up with a sensitive, understanding mentor.

They had the chance to meet in kindergarten, experience all the childlike troubles together. Of course, they couldn’t part—and they went together into first grade, holding hands. They found a treasure with the school keys, opened invisible doors on the path of first-graders. The elementary grades flew by like a single moment—the bright afterglow of it will stay in the heart forever. Behind them is a lot: incredible adventures in Tanais, the most important conversations around a carpet, and someone’s defeats shared among everyone “like brothers.”

And what lies ahead? Middle and high school: pull the rope taut and jump into life!