Modern Augustinian Confession

Memoir of an Urban Pedagogue, Minister and Activist from Allentown Pennsylvania.

Geists memoir is written in the tradition of Saint Augustines book, Confessions. Confessions is considered the first Western autobiography chronicling the saints struggles with sin, lust, and his life in Christian ministry. With brutal honesty, Jim Geist shares stories of struggle with character defects, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive behavior. It is a series of antidotal stories from elementary school, little league sports, family stories, and funny stories from hunting camp, graduate school, ministry, and his job as a high school social studies teacher in New York City. In his fifteen years as an educator, dozens of students encouraged Mr. Geist to write a memoir because they found his stories interesting, humorous, and inspirational. He was voted Teacher of the Year in 2012 by his peers, the same year his assistant principal took him to arbitration to steal his livelihood for him speaking out against the change from teacher-centered teaching to classes becoming times of group work where most of the time was not being spent on the curriculum or preparing for the New York state exams. It is a memoir of his careers, marriage, divorce, heartbreak, relationships, human rights activism against genocide, and modern-day slavery. It is a story of an urban teacher, in the midst of changes in the public education paradigm and a failed political candidate shot with slings and arrows of dirty tricks and false charges. It has stories of arbitration and court battles and recovery from codependency through the twelve-step program, learning how to accept life on lifes terms. You will find yourself laughing on almost every page and identifying with many of the human conundrums we face in life because life is often stranger than fiction.