Jeremy Tucker

Jeremy Tucker was born in 1975 in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in Houston, Texas. In 1997 he graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. During his time at Yale, he majored in English and won the Outstanding Senior Essay award for a thesis on children's writing. After college he joined Teach For America to work with students in one of America's most under served communities. In Phoenix for two years, he taught reading, math, and creative writing to fourth through sixth grade students. During his second year, he was invited to run a teacher training session for the staff of his school about his creative textbook-less methods of teaching. During his second year, he also served as a mentor for one of his former middle school students. His book, Before A Canyon, is about that student. It's an account of Tucker's relationship with the child in the child's world outside the school day. In the book, Tucker refuses to provide answers while searching earnestly for them himself. Tucker left Phoenix to begin Harvard Medical School in the fall of 1999. During his time at Harvard, he continued to work with under served youth. He also continued to write, completing reviews about the physiology of stress in child abuse and about the medical treatment of asthma in children, the latter of which was published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins as a chapter in a then new pharmacology textbook. In addition, he served as a guest speaker at multiple Teach For America events, including the annual million-dollar fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria. Meanwhile, Tucker has had a life-threatening personal journey which, while not a feature of the book, nonetheless informs it. Tucker was a pediatric resident at Texas Children's Hospital for one year. Now he is a patient. In June of 2005, he hit his head while whitewater rafting and, although there was no bleeding inside his brain, the emergency room CAT Scan revealed that Tucker had a large brain tumor. This was a surprise to the Emergency Room doctor given the lack of symptoms and a shock to Tucker. Unfortunately, the next day, he was diagnosed with malignant cerebelllar cancer. Today, Tucker is cancer free, but the effects of surgical and radiation therapies left him unable to complete residency. Today, he works as an author, teaches two days a week, and directs research sponsored by Texas Children's Hospital. He also completes various sorts of rehabilitation therapy for an hour or two most days. He is currently completing another book. This one is about new methods of analyzing children's creative writing. He is simultaneously working on a book about his life as a resident and as a handicapped person, a children's book about a baby elephant, and one other book about a teenager in Boston. Tucker remains upbeat and works hard to overcome his limitations. He constantly says, "We all have problems, and problems are definitely no fun. Some of mine are obvious. Having problems is a part of life. But still, life is a blessing."