Dorothy Fletcher

Teaching Is Not for Sissies
The Cruelest Months:
A Teacher's Coming-of-Age Story

The hopes of any society are etched in the faces of students in classes all across America. Donna Webster, a newly graduated, white English teacher, could see these hopes as she looked out at her classroom at Paul Lawrence Dunbar Senior High School, a predominantly black inner city high school in Jacksonville, Florida. From Yasmina's poetic letters about unspeakable tragedy to Thomas' wasted potential to Rochelle's feisty presence--Donna came to realize, as all

teachers do, that education is as much about learning as it is about teaching. All of her first year lessons, those taught and those learned, are chronicled in The Cruelest Months, and Donna's Webster's baptism into the cruel world of teaching is a testament to the power that one individual has in shaping this world.