The Heart of Teaching

“American Han shook me to my core. Gutting in its quietest moments and heartbreakingly familiar in its loudest conflicts, this book is a gripping portrait of the cost of assimilation into American life."<BR> —Muriel Leung, Lambda award-winning author of How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster<BR><BR> Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player. But where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant. Their parents, each on their own path toward the elusive American Dream (their mother hell-bent on having the perfect house and the perfect family, their father obsessed with working his way up from one successful business to the next), don’t want to see the family unraveling. When Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes his absence as the warning sign it is until it erupts, forcing them all to come to terms with their past and present selves in a country that isn’t all it promised it would be. Both deeply serious and wickedly funny, American Han is a profound story about striving and assimilation, difficult love, and family fidelity. A searing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee’s debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape.

In Märchen ist alles so einfach: Gut und Böse, Schwarz und Weiß, oben und unten, Freund und Feind, Schurke und Held. Es gibt nichts dazwischen - glasklar wie der Schuh von Aschenputtel. Aber ganz so leicht ist es leider nicht immer: Es war einmal in der märchenhaften Past Tense Series. Band eins: Die grauenhafte Kindheit des Anwalts Wyatt endete plötzlich, als seine Eltern ermordet wurden. Diese Tat forderte aber einen Kollateralschaden: Seine beste Freundin Liz verlor ihren Vater und sinnt nun auf Rache. Während Wyatt dazwischensteht, zwischen dem Pflichtgefühl seiner besten Freundin gegenüber und der Dankbarkeit darüber, dass seine Hölle ein Ende gefunden hat, nimmt Liz die Söhne des Täters ins Visier, um diesen aus seinem Versteck zu locken.In Anson und Avery findet Wyatt jedoch überraschend Verbündete - mehr noch: Er findet Freundschaft und hofft auf eine Liebe, von der er dachte, sie verloren zu haben. Aber wer ist wirklich ein Freund und wer ein Feind, wenn die Grenzen verschwimmen? Drei Fronten, eine Fehde, unzählige Geheimnisse und ein Ziel: Die Schwäche der anderen zu treffen, und dabei die eigene zu schützen.

Drawing on her 35-year plus experience in the classroom, Lisa Lee has transformed her extensive and authentic teaching experience into a contagious passion and energy with a specialization in Gifted and Talented programs and a focus on the students who don't always fit in a box. The Heart of Teaching is a book about her experience as a teacher, and the students she both taught and learned from, and the lessons she garnered as someone who always taught from the heart.