This first-hand account of a recent Yale graduate's first - and last - year teaching in a DC public school paints a frightening picture of the chaos that has become an accepted part of daily life in an urban school that lacks effective leadership. Among the challenges encountered by the author were a principal who refused to support his disciplinary policies and who undermined his attempts to hold students to high standards; black parents who were suspicious of a white teacher; and district policies that forced teachers to either stand back and watch while students inflicted bodily harm on others, or be subject to investigation for corporal punishment.
"How I joined Teach for America - and got sued for $20 million," Joshua Kaplowitz, City Journal, Winter 2003