Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning

by Jeffrey Berman

In Dying to Teach, Jeffrey Berman confronts the most wrenching loss the death of his beloved wife, Barbara. Through four interrelated narratives—how Barbara wrote about her illness in a cancer diary, how he cared for her throughout her illness, how his students reacted to his disclosure that she was dying, and how he responded to her death—Berman explores his efforts to hold on to Barbara precisely as she was letting go of life. Intensely personal, Dying to Teach affirms the power of writing to memorialize loss and work through grief, and demonstrates the importance of death teachers and students writing and talking about a subject that, until now, has often been deemed too personal for the classroom.

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2007

Reviews

[Alam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a eulogy from the beginning to the end. Although it's well written and the author has added lots of references, reading this book made me think why I am still alive. It's a serious and painful read.

[Diana DeFelice · Rating 5 out of 5]

'This book was an act of self-disclosure that brought the instructor closer to his students by doing exactly what he asks them to do each week....Unlike other professors who put their own books on the syllabus in order to sell their books, I think Jeff does it because his books really are the best for his courses. In Dying to Teach he not only makes himself vulnerable to the reader, but he shows his vulnerability to former students through the reading of his eulogy. And as some of his students remarked, it is important for the student to see the professor as a human being, to understand the reasons for his empathic teaching methods, and that there is life beyond the walls of the classroom.' - taken from my own paper for Jeff Berman's class on writing about love and loss