Synopsis
An account of an inner-city teacher's first years on the front lines at Parkmont High School presents entertaining anecdotes about how the former Marine employed various creative devices to get her students to learn.
Reviews
YA-- In a style reminiscent of Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase (Prentice-Hall, 1988), this book explores the adventures and misadventures of the author, a high school teacher at an inner-city school in California. The book gives insight into the lives of the students and the emotional baggage that they bring to school each day. Johnson shares her successes and failures in trying to connect with her students. YAs will be able to identify with many of characters in this fast-paced, easy-to-read offering.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
While her Marine Corps training helped, Johnson found the caring parts of her personality more effective in dealing with the recalcitrant students she met as a teacher of English at "Parkmont High," an inner-city school in California. There, she has struggled to reach and teach a group of teenagers, many from immigrant families, who often revel in nonachievment and accept their roles as failures. Colorful anecdotes detail the successes and setbacks of an inspirational teacher with a crusty sense of humor who has resorted to "a little blatant bribery" and devised unorthodox approaches (one elaborate scheme involving kissing a kid who slept in class) to accommodate minority students' learning styles and improve their self-images. Humor tempers Johnson's gritty portrayal of her battle to keep her students from slipping through bureaucratic cracks. Her book radiates unsentimental affection for these kids, who "keep me coming back every year to my lopsided wooden desk, my crumbling bulletin boards, my outdated textbooks, and my own handful of dreams."
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Another funny, alarming look at a city school from a dedicated, unconventional teacher. When former Navy and Marine servicewoman Johnson (Making Waves, 1986) took over the pseudonymous ``Parkmont High'' classroom of a teacher who'd had a breakdown, she found herself surrounded by unruly, unmotivated students partial to Atom Bomb cologne and thunderbolt hair styles. At first, they tried the usual tricks, and Johnson, like others before her, nearly despaired (``I shook my head, and bit my lower lip, trying not to cry''). But she persisted, using an original mix of boot-camp tactics and genuine warmth, and, one by one, the students responded--like Danny, ``an advanced thinker caught in the body of a remedial student,'' who, inspired by Johnson's parakeet, turned from marginal to remarkable; or Curtis, who'd had a blank journal all year until The Merchant of Venice seized his imagination (``I never had anything to say before''). Along the way, Johnson learns a few lessons of her own, from simple management skills (``outshouting kids is like trying to teach a pig to sing'') to, most reluctantly, the hard facts of life (``You can't save a kid who doesn't want to be saved''). We've been up this down staircase before, especially in the late 1960's when an armful of books (by Kozol, Kohl, Herndon) first dramatized great inequities in school systems and the sad shuffle awaiting those least able to speak up for themselves. Johnson shows the importance of basic respect, constant encouragement, and unorthodox teaching strategies for a generation (another generation) of disenfranchised students. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Johnson, a former Marine, offers a humorous account of teaching at an American high school. Johnson's "posse" consists of disenfranchised teens attending Parkmont High School in California. As the new teacher on the block, Johnson exhibits the energy and idealism to motivate her students. Although her methods are often unorthodox, the problems they address are real enough. Claiming that she succeeds where others have failed, Johnson writes of her students with humor and sympathy, but fellow teachers are stereotyped as overworked and uninspired. This book will circulate in libraries serving student teachers and in-service veteran teachers.
- Nancy E. Zuwiyya, Binghamton City Sch. Dist . ,
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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