Hall reflects upon his 27 years as a teacher, most of which were spent with fifth graders in Cheboygan, Michigan. The book has 27 chapters, or “lessons,” one for every year of the author’s teaching career. They all follow a similar format, beginning with an anecdote about a classroom project, field trip, or problem. Hall then explains what sparked the anecdote and often throws in a twist; a story about a student’s ill-advised gift shop purchase turns into a reminiscence of buying and selling classroom “property” as part of a lesson to teach financial responsibility. A story about trying to teach boring improper fractions shifts into an account of a nighttime spy game in which the secret clues are all improper fractions. To teach adjectives, the author transformed himself into a French chef with an unconvincing costume, allowing his students to laugh as they learned. After each entry, Hall asks, “What did I learn from all of this?” Often, the answer is lessons about the value of community, creativity, hard work, persistence, and fun. He poses questions to readers along the same lines, like “What might happen if you stopped worrying about doing things right and just gave people the chance to surprise you?”; “What might happen if we trusted people, even little people, with real responsibility to make someone else’s world brighter?” It’s easy to see why the author was such a beloved teacher—his writing is buoyant, engaging, and full of obvious passion for his students and his work. The anecdotes do get a little repetitive, and it might have been helpful to see more examples of failed experiments in addition to the successful ones. Still, Hall’s memoir of a career in education has many ideas that will be useful for teachers of all stripes, and it’s sure to inspire anyone who reads it.