The Cruelest Months

About the Book

Novice teacher Donna Webster, young, white, optimistic and nervous, was thrown straight into the trenches – Paul Lawrence Dunbar Senior High School, an inner-city, primarily black school in Jacksonville, Florida. Nothing in college prepared Donna for what she would encounter in classrooms surging with high spirits and flaring emotions, and an assortment of outspoken, surprising, infuriating, warm and unforgettable students. From Rochelle’s feisty presence to Luscious’s impish humor, Reginald’s wasted potential, and Yasmina’s poetry about unspeakable tragedy--Donna came to realize that education is as much about learning as it is about teaching. Her first-year lessons, both taught and learned, became a journey of revelation, through terrors and triumphs, sorrows, joys and hopes. Donna’s baptism into the cruel world of teaching revealed the power one individual has in shaping this world.

About the Author

Dorothy Fletcher has been teaching English for 28 years in Duval County, Florida. Along with teaching, writing is her passion. Her poetry has appeared in over 70 literary journals and anthologies, and her articles have appeared in The Florida Times Union and Jacksonville Magazine. She married her college sweetheart, Hardy Fletcher, also an educator, and they live in Jacksonville, Florida, near their daughter Amanda and their son Casey Scott.