In her account of her years in Teach for America, the lesson Michelle Rhee wants to impart is that success in the classroom takes time to achieve and depends mainly on discipline and toughness. In her first year she failed miserably: she was a nervous wreck who couldn’t control her classroom. But on the first day of her second year, she writes, she took a new approach: “I wore my game face. No smiles, no joy; I was all thin lips and flinty glares.” She describes making her students line up and walk into the classroom four times, until they had achieved a state of perfect order. “My mistake the first year was trying to be warm and friendly with the students, thinking that my kids needed love and compassion.
