Or start with Scene 1 at
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?AuthorID=84575&id=61052
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The new school year at Nogales High School in the early ’90s started early during the summer, and I worked for free. In this school district, teachers were paid a monthly salary from the end of September to the end of June.
We had ten monthly paydays a year and then ten weeks of summer without pay, but many districts divide the annual salary into twelve payments, one a month.
It didn’t matter how many hours a teacher worked each week—forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred—the money stayed the same. True, coaches and advisors were paid a stipend for the extra duty, but the stipend wasn’t much for the added hours we worked.
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After I talked to the principal about the tug-of-war with the gangbangers that took place near the end of the previous school year, he moved us out of that portable classroom to a room in a real brick building.
It was the first real classroom I’d taught in since transferring to the high school in 1989 from the intermediate school. For several years, I was a gypsy, teaching out of five different classrooms and constantly on the move from period to period.
It was during my second year at the high school that I ended in that windowless, portable, dead-cat dungeon. It had heat and a noisy air conditioner, but using it meant the students and I couldn’t hear each other. But without it, we breathed stale, rotten air. In hindsight, I think someone in administration—maybe at the district level—wanted me to leave and was torturing me, hoping I would quit.
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Thank you for taking time to read these scenes from Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé. If you read the rest of the book, please consider telling your friends and/or posting a short review on Amazon. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated.
“Crazy is Normal” goes on a promotional tour starting October 1st that ends in the middle of November, 2014. During the promotion, the e-book of the memoir will be on sale for 0.99ȼ. The price will return to $3.99 at the end of the promotional tour.
Scenes from "Crazy is Normal, a classroom expose" will appear here Saturdays in thirteen installments covering the first ten percent of the memoir or 12,455 words.
The Introduction, which comes before the Prelude, may be found at:
