Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity

[essentialsaltes]

Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity is the story of poet Elizabeth Gold's one year teaching at a progressive charter school in NYC. She is woefully unprepared to handle inner city youth with poetry as her only weapon.

This is not a great book. It's probably not even a good book, as she allows her poetry to migrate into her prose far too frequently [and there is a reason you have not read her poetry]. But it's still an interesting book. It combines the horrors of the modern educational system, the horrors of the modern teen, and a narrator who suffers from an inability to acknowledge her own failure.

As a failure in the high school milieu myself, I can sympathize, but I like to think I was more realistic.

Comments

[freudinshade.livejournal.com]

My cousin, who used to be an education reporter in New York, spent a year teaching in a NYC public school and wrote a book about it. It was definately a struggle.

The book's called "Shut Up and Let The Lady Teach" http://www.amazon.com/Shut-Up-Let-Lady-Teach/dp/0671690345/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246304159&sr=8-1

If you're interested, I can probably dig up my parent's copy you could borow.

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

Sounds neat. Don't go to any strenuous effort, but if you happen to remember it, I'd certainly appreciate borrowing it.