Alexie's inspiring YA novel

Being a longtime fan of Sherman Alexie's work, I was thrilled to finally read his latest work, which is also his first Young Adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. The book was entertaining, educational, and inspiring, and is definitely something I would be interested in teaching in a classroom setting. The story, which is largely autobiographical, is told from the perspective of Junior, a young Indian boy living on a reservation in Washington state. Junior takes ownership for his own education when he decided to leave Welpinit, the school on the reservation, for a better school off of the reservation.
The novel explores the difficulty of living between cultures, and also highlights the immense inequalities of America's public school system. Reading Alexie's novel is a rich experience, and the part of the experience that stood out most for me was a cartoon by Junior (the novel's antagonist) entitled "Who my parents would have been if someone had paid attention to their dreams." It shows Junior's mother as a student of literature, and his father as a famous musician. Junior explains that " I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. They dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams."
This stood out for me because it really highlighted why I want to become a teacher, and it is something I will have on my mind everyday in the classroom in order to remember that what we do matters. Everyone deserves to have someone believe in them and listen to their dreams. For many people, it's a caring teacher.