THE ACCIDENTAL EDUCATOR

Reno’s memoir spotlights a man who has gladly devoted 40 years of his life to teaching.

The author’s path to becoming a community college English professor wasn’t one he ever would have predicted. The second of five children, Reno was still young when his family moved from Kansas to Florida for his father’s new job opportunity. He craved adventure after his high school graduation and eventually became an intelligence analyst in the Air Force, which stationed him in England. After four years of military service, he found his options were limited—corporate life didn’t suit him, so the author applied his degree in English to educating youth, launching his “full-time professional career” at a Florida community college in 1974, when he was in his 30s. It was unquestionably a challenge, as he had no prior experience, and his wife, Pat, was pregnant with their first child. Reno stayed at the college for many years, only moving on for new positions in the same field, including a stint as the CEO of a community college in Colorado and a job as “Founding President” at a Texas community college that hadn’t yet been built. The author had a passion for giving students “every opportunity for personal, social, and academic success” through means that often went beyond teaching—he excelled at fundraising and helped to develop a brand-new college’s architectural features to maintain a clean campus and student satisfaction. By the time he retired, in 2014, he had learned many valuable lessons that he could pass on to youngsters.

Reno’s book deftly fuses his educational career with his personal life. He describes a childhood that certainly wasn’t free of troubles: His father’s drinking, following a seizure, resulted in unusually erratic behavior, and the family suffered a financial blow with a failed movie theater investment, just as televisions were popping up in more and more homes. Despite the author intermittently highlighting such details as places he’s lived and his mentors and influences, this memoir is primarily chronological and easy to follow. Reno occasional includes essays or letters that, though written at different points in his life, connect to whatever topic a particular chapter focuses on. The narrative contains a wealth of historical details—Reno, who’s a white male, first entered a segregated school at age 12 (in 1954) and witnessed much racial and sexual discrimination both in and outside the workforce. It’s hardly surprising that this retired English professor’s prose is lucid and refreshingly polished. The undeniable affection for the work he’s done comes through as well, and he’s not above a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, as when he arms students with literature terminology in case they’re “kidnapped by a rogue book club.”

An educator’s professional and personal lives together make for an engaging, richly detailed true story.