Teacher Misery: Helicopter Parents, Special Snowflakes and Other Bullshit
Published May 2016 by Truth Be Told Publishing
Dear Editors and Writers at College Misery,
I am writing to ask if you would be interested in reviewing my book Teacher Misery: Helicopter Parents, Special Snowflakes and Other Bullshit for your blog. Many years ago I attempted to start a sister blog to College Misery called Teacher Misery (with the moderator's permission). The site sought to tackle the same issues, only in the high school setting. While the blog never went anywhere, my instagram did. @TeacherMisery has over 56,000 followers, which motivated me to finish my book which is due out on May 27th.
Teacher Misery perfectly encapsulates the comical misery that has become the teaching profession. My strange, funny, and sometimes unbelievable teaching experiences are told through a collection of short stories, essays and artifacts including real emails from parents, students and administrators. From the parents who blame their son’s act of arson on ME for causing him low self-esteem, to the student who offers to teach me how to sell drugs so I can pay my bills, to the administrator whose best advice is to “treat kids like sacks of shit,” one story is more shocking than the next. A book that most readers of College Misery will relate to--Teacher Misery paints an amusing and thoroughly entertaining picture of what has become of our education system, without detracting from the overall point that what teachers have to put up with today is complete, utter, unacceptable insanity.
There are several established and NYT bestselling authors who have written blurbs for my book. They have described my work as, "Original, hilarious, compelling, twisted, scary, funny, freakish, insightful, eye-opening, shocking and intriguing." Laurie Notaro, New York Times bestselling author of The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, even described it as a masterpiece!
If you have read this far, know that I appreciate your time. If you read my book, I promise to entertain you, make you laugh out loud, and feel a sense of relief that others are telling your story! Let me know if I can send you and/or your contributors a free ebook or paperback.
Sincerely,
Jane Morris
I followed the Teacher Misery blog whilst it existed - I don't have instagram so didn't go there. I definitely related to the stories there, and look forward to reading the book!
ReplyDeleteHow do the students and parents like the book when you share their text, I'm assuming, without permission?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you have to assume the names have been redacted? Otherwise, lawsuits would fly.
DeleteEven with names redacted I would not want my son's teacher publishing things my kid said without permission.
DeleteMaking money off of my kid while laughing at him as well? Nope.
You'd have to show harm to block publishing, which would be highly unlikely if names were redacted and stories anonymized.
DeleteUnless there were conversations in a private confidential proceeding (i.e. in a disciplinary hearing) any utterances by a principal, fellow teacher, student, parent are not a protected communication (like with patient-doctor or lawyer-client conversations) with no expectation of privacy, so, yes, we can laugh at your kid's stupidity when it is published, because your permission is not required for it to be published.
You didn't tell us not to. If that seems like a crazy expectation, then why does the NFL take 30 seconds out of every game to tell us not to rebroadcast? If you really didn't want us to laugh at your kid, you should have been more vocal about it. We're not mind readers, you know.
DeleteThe idea that someone is making money off your kid seems a bit half-baked, unless he's Justin Bieber or something.
DeleteEven if he were, his ephemeral public utterances are not copyrightable. His utterances fixed in tangible form---those are.
I am not a lawyer.
Don't feel bad. The college administrators laugh at all of us faculty for the shit they get to pile on us, and they make bank off of all students.
DeleteMany students make more or less the same gaffes, so, for better or for worse, it's not that hard to create a composite text illustrating typical problems (and it's pretty hard to tell an actual student text from such a composite).
DeleteIn other words, the texts your kid writes, like many other aspect of hir, are not nearly as unique as you may think (which doesn't mean your kid isn't a perfectly decent human being who will, with a bit of guidance, mature into a contributing citizen, just that (s)he isn't special, or at least not any more special than the rest of the human race).
Here's a better idea: Stop helicoptering, don't blame teachers for your kids' mistakes, and accept your responsibility in the collective dumbing-down of American education, and maybe there will be no more emails to publish.
ReplyDeleteI can't find an Amazon or Barnes and Noble listing for this. Where can I buy it. It sounds fun!
ReplyDeleteI would like to purchase this book as well.
DeleteOne thing that has me puzzled in the above description is this characterization: "one story is more shocking than the next." This implies that the stories get less shocking as you progress through them. A more typical arrangement might be "each story is more shocking than the previous," which is what I think the author was really after.
It ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. The final chapter begins, "My students weren't too bad. It was a pretty normal year."
DeleteThis looks like fun, and also like useful homework (whatever happens in K-12 eventually affects 13-16).
ReplyDelete