Teaching Is Not For Sissies!

Novice teacher Donna Webster, young, white, optimistic and nervous, was thrown straight into the trenches-Paul Lawrence Dunbar Senior High School, an inner-city, primarily black school in Jacksonville, Florida. Nothing in college prepared Donna for what she would encounter in classrooms surging with high spirits and flaring emotions, and an assortment of outspoken, surprising, infuriating, warm and unforgettable students. From Rochelles feisty presence to Lusciouss impish humor, Reginalds wasted potential, and Yasminas poetry about unspeakable tragedy-Donna comes to realize that education is as much about learning as it is about teaching. Her first years lessons, both taught and learned, became a journey of revelation, through terrors and triumphs, sorrows, joys and hopes. Donnas baptism into the cruel world of teaching reveals the power one individual has in shaping this world.

Jacksonville, FL (PRWEB) January 21, 2004 --Real-life teachers are not always as breathtakingly beautiful or musically talented as those in Fox TVs Boston Public. Not every suave instructor is scandalously involved with the popular cheerleader, or embroiled in an arduous legal struggle with the school board. In Dorothy Fletchers The Cruelest Months, schoolteacher Donna Webster-white, optimistic and nervous-is sent to an inner-city black school where her initiation into the cruel world of teaching reveals her power to shape the world.

Webster discovers through her academic journey that education is not for the faint of heart. From Yasminas poetry of unspeakable tragedy, to AIDS-stricken Rochelle, who dies a week before her seventeenth birthday, Webster realizes that education is as much about learning as it is about teaching.

Only an educator with extensive teaching experience like Fletchers could so accurately depict the condition of Americas public schools, where violence and disrespectful behavior abound, and where money and moral support from parents are lacking. Still, Fletchers thirty years with the Jacksonville, Florida, school system has shown her that minimal pay and the lack of appreciation have not discouraged a few passionate and caring individuals who have ventured in the noble profession of molding young minds.

About the Author

Dorothy Fletcher has been teaching English for over 30 years in Duval County, Florida. Along with teaching, writing is her passion. Her poetry has appeared in over 70 literary journals and anthologies, and her articles have been published in The Florida Times Union and Jacksonville Magazine. She married her college sweetheart, Hardy Fletcher, also an educator, and they live in Jacksonville, Florida, near their daughter Amanda and their son Casey Scott.

The Cruelest Months
By Dorothy K. Fletcher
Publication Date: September 16, 2002
Trade Paperback; $21.99; 262 pages; 1-4010-6124-9
Cloth Hardback; $31.99; 262 pages; 1-4010-6125-7

Dorothy K. Fletcher is available for interviews by calling (904) 737-1550) or by emailing her at dotief@comcast.net. To request a complimentary paperback review copy of The Cruelest Months, contact the publisher at (215) 923-4686 x. 190. To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (215) 599-0114.

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