Elizabeth Gold

I tried to read this book after reading Rafe Esquith's There Are No Shortcuts, which maybe wasn't the best idea since he is so overwhelmingly successful and Gold, well, wasn't. My cringe factor at first was so super sensitive to this book that I had to put it down for a while. It wasn't until I took a Behavior Management class this summer that I could more fully appreciate it. Someone really ought to have given Gold a clue as to how real life as a teacher works, but we've all gotta find our show more out own way, right? But I'll give her props since I would never want to be in her shoes (the fourth teacher in a single school year for the 9th-grade language arts classes, and without any education background at that). This was a quick read for me once I got over the initial horror scenes of the beginning. show less

Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity is a book where the author Elizabeth Gold makes herself out to be a Truly Fantastic Person whose efforts at being a temp. teacher in a liberal arts high school on New York's Best Public High Schools list are not appreciated by a class of violent, promiscuous, nasty retards, i.e. teenagers. We've all suffered teachers like that. As she says, she is a poet, not a teacher. I bet the kids wish she'd stuck to writing verse and not inflicted herself on them. show more Reading her makes me want to spit. show less