What do I remember from my 16 years as a high school teacher? The kids who bloomed from half-child to young adult in the space of ten months. The Year 13 girl exclaiming “Oh, that's so majestic!” as we read Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting. The two tough lower-stream boys, who after I'd told them the story of Beowulf, went “That was cool, sir. You know any more like that?” The 50-year-olds who stop you in the street, exclaiming “Mr Hill! Remember me?”

And the silent ones who couldn't or wouldn't learn. The boy with swollen mouth from beatings at home. The lovely girl in silent tears all through one lesson, who left the following week to have her baby. The three during those 16 years who killed themselves.

Every profession has stories. Teaching, with the parade of human life it involves, seems to have more than most. Certainly they pack Tim Heath's engaging narrative. The Grey Lynn author spent almost half a century in classrooms. That's terrific. He wandered into the job in 1961, with “a duffle coat, a cherrywood pipe, and a head full of attitudes.” Love the pipe.

At Auckland Teachers' College, he was rebuked for not wearing a tie. Dauntless and often tieless, he began his classroom career at Huapai, where he praised the kids' art and took them for runs. He taught at spectacularly remote Papuni, in the Urewera, with access problems involving a giant bull sprawled across the path, and a motivational technique where “I ended up, we ended up, reading all day.” Still terrific.

Then came Samoa, with its lovely settings and unlovely culture of corporal punishment; Beresford Street in Central Auckland; several stints at the Correspondence School, while it was becoming less concerned with geographically remote pupils and more with those whose afflictions and issues meant they and conventional schools were incompatible.

For a decade, he was Principal of Decile 1 Newton Central School, a time of “jubilation and despair” in a place beset by economic, cultural, philosophical problems. One of his first acts was to stop the Friday afternoon practice of sitting all 100 pupils down in front of a DVD, just to keep them under control.

Meanwhile, there was his personal life, often spliced to his professional career. There's marriage, death, estrangement, contentment. He writes about it stoically and succinctly.

Tim Heath sounds just like the best teachers I met during my time in the job. He held steadfastly to a belief in pupil-centred learning, “the very heart of the art of teaching,” where syllabus took second place to individual needs. He saw the arts – music, art, dance, reading and writing – as quickening, illuminating forces in all education. He insisted on kindness and respect for even the most unresponsive, unbecoming kids. That's all pretty terrific as well.

He doesn't hesitate to challenge; sees intermediate schools as silly and irrelevant; much prefers junior highs. He's not keen on macrons or red-necked rugby selectors. Byzantine administrations, “gate-closers,” and reputation-obsessives heat his collar. In a rousing finale, he wants more people to become teachers — and kids to play bullrush again.

There's the occasional orotund or pedagogic phrasing, and a once-over-speedily feel about some sections. There's also plenty of pawky humour and self-deprecating anecdotes. I did like innocent Matilda, who thought aphrodisiacs were an ethnic hairstyle, and Daryl with his court appearances plus T-shirt inscribed 'LIFE'S A SHIT, THEN YOU DIE'. Heath is an active poet and he writes with the clarity of someone who's put in plenty of word-work.

A few decades back, there were moves to establish a Master Teacher category, recognising those who excelled in the classroom and were committed to their pupils. Tim Heath deserves such an accolade, and The Accidental Teacher neatly encapsulates his achievement.

Reviewed by David Hill