The primary source used to write this memoir comes from a daily journal that Lloyd Lofthouse kept for one school year. On sale from $3.99 to $0.99 from October 12 to 18, 2015,
Readers who envision eager students lapping up learning led by a Tiger Teacher will be disappointed. Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult. Throughout this journal, though, Lofthouse seems able to keep the hope alive that there’s a future for each student that doesn’t include jail—thanks in large part to his sixth period journalism class and its incredible editor, Amanda. – Bruce Reeves
Bruce Reeves taught Speech, Drama, and various versions of English to ninth - twelfth graders from 1958 to 1984 in the Pittsburg [California] and Acalanes School Districts; from 1984 until he actually quit teaching in 2012, he taught full-time in the English Division at Diablo Valley College, including his specialty, the Bible as Literature
Excerpt
A loud voice: "Mr. Lofthouse, I hate you.”
I was leaving my classroom a few hours after school let out. I looked around.
Nothing; then, a familiar face with no name attached. He was standing at the far end of the building by the back gate, holding a paperback book and shaking it for emphasis.
"When I was in ninth grade, I hated you," he said. "I hated reading. I hated those essays and book reports you made us do, over and over until we got them right. You even got my mom to sit by me at home to make sure I read those books and finished the homework. Now I'm hooked. These fucking books are like drugs. I can't stop reading them." He delivered all this with an expression of disgust. Then his face blossomed into a smile. "And I still hate it."
He turned and walked off campus and into the barrio where his family lived. It was then I remembered who he was. Four years earlier, Fabio had been nothing but pain-in-the-ass full of verbal irony and sarcasm. He'd fought me every inch of the way, but his mother became my ally. She was one of the few parents who listened to my advice, ditched the self-esteem movement, and learned to say no.
Professional Reviews
A Must Read!
Lloyd has written an honest and fascinating story of a year in the working life of a dedicated California public school teacher. This is a must read for those thinking of becoming a teacher, is a public school teacher or administrator, or has children in the public school system.
What works most effectively is how Lloyd shows the contrast between the two student extremes - the top achievers who take what Lloyd offers and learns how to conquer the world, and the many slackers who appear determine to sabotage their teacher's best efforts to teach them the skills they need for a successful future.
Nogales is an interesting school with some amazing qualities that might surprise most people
Lloyd Lofthouse has written a powerful memoir in Crazy Normal that took me back to time we shared at Nogales High School. His reflections and anecdotes based on his daily journal brought so many memories of my own teaching experiences there. This is not fiction, but retelling of events that might give insight for many into the challenges a teacher faces every day.
Nogales is an interesting school with some amazing qualities that might surprise most people. The school itself is nestled among several diverse communities in Southern California. Our kids came to us from middle class to lower economic backgrounds. The ethnic make-up ranged to include everyone and everything with a dominance of the Hispanic groups. The kids with Spanish surnames came from Mexico (upper and lower classes), the Philippines, Honduras, Columbia, etc. This diversity made it necessary for teachers to try to reach students past the barrier of limited English skills, or those whose parents had no schooling, as well as parents who were professional people, the wealthy, the poor, and everything in between. Our teachers worked miracles every day.
Part of a small school district just east of Los Angeles, Nogales sprang up quickly as many families tried to escape the “big city” problems of LA to find a home in a more country-like setting. The early neighborhoods included some housing that required extra money if the buyers wanted concrete floors. In the early days of my teaching, some of my students shared their sleeping quarters with farm animals that wondered at will from the yard to the dirt flooring under the roofs. These were the “Happy Homes” of La Puente.
Lofthouse’s journal shows a later picture of the community. The kids who populate the pages of his memoir don’t have dirt floors, but many of them are still new to the country and the language. Some are headed to colleges and universities while others, if they graduate from high school, might be the first of their families to achieve that diploma.
Though he doesn’t use the real names of his students, I was able to recognize quite a few o f his main characters. Lloyd’s frustration with his Scrollies, the staff members of the school newspaper, often included kids I had in my own English classes. Like Lloyd, I advised the Scroll for many years and Mr. Lofthouse took it over one or two years after me. While my battles over the school newspaper had been with an administration who wanted to control it, Lloyd’s were with students who were resistant to his demands and with parents who, often, were not supportive.
I had to take breaks from reading when Lloyd described the grueling and frustrating teachers’ meetings. These were not times I wanted to revisit now that I have retired after thirty-seven years of teaching. But like Lloyd, my good memories are of the students who walked through my doors every day. I revel in their accomplishments and their ability to overcome huge societal obstacles in order to succeed. Nogales is a place like many other American high schools where crazy is normal.
I applaud Lloyd Lofthouse for his dedication and hard work on behalf of kids who needed someone who cared enough to help his students learn and grow. His story is worth telling—and worth the read.
We need more classroom journal-keepers as honest as this one
Lots of teachers I know wish they had kept a daily journal as detailed as Lofthouse's; you forget so much. He's done old teachers a favor, and will have them nodding their heads -- "yes, that's the way it was." Parents and teachers who live in lusher locations may turn their nose up at his toughness and military approach to classroom rules, but in the long run it's the students who profited. Someday maybe someone will keep a similar journal and write a parallel account of life in a "nice" school classroom. A great read that gradually moves the reader from a sense of "crazy" to a sense of "maybe there's hope."
TRUE STORY. Bella survived an abusive powerbroker father with organized crime ties, a drug-addicted mother and a physically/sexually abusive brother. Shocking & inspirational. When she couldn't cry, she tattooed a crying angel to cry for her.
For a time, I perched myself on a flat rock, comparing my life with the Guyandotte River. Just as its tributaries replenish it daily, changing it in some small—sometimes great—degree, so have the day-to-day occurrences of life changed me. Like the ri
