A Disgrace to the Profession

Becoming a Voice, Paul Ruffin Adds His Voice

We were recently privileged to have our book reviewed in the Huntsville (Texas) Item by Paul Ruffin, Regents Distinguished Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. Professor Ruffin is also the editor of the Texas Review. Following is what he had to say in the first of his three columns about A Disgrace to the Profession.

A Disgrace to the Profession Hits It Right on the Head

For years now I have had former students drop by the office or phone or write or e-mail me about life in the trenches on the front line of our educational system, and the picture they have painted is not pretty. Almost every one of them by now has left the classroom: to become librarians, to move into administration, to work outside education altogether, to do anything but try to teach in an environment where they have to do everything but teach.

Now cometh a novel from a couple of former Iowa teachers that lays bare the evils and absurdities at work in public education. Fiction though A Disgrace to the Profession may be, this book is as RIGHT ON as a piece of top-notch investigative reporting.

Charles Newton and Gretchen Kauffman taught in the public schools in Des Moines, Iowa, for a collective 70 years, and during their tenures they watched the American public education system enter the death spiral that it is in now, with greedy, ambitious administrators emphasizing school image and the improvement of standardized test scores rather than quality education, for exemplary school reputations and improved test scores are the basis of promotion, incentive pay, and increased funding for the districts.

Newton and Kauffman’s novel is the outgrowth of their anonymous newsletter that described what they “saw wrong with the public education system”; the newsletter caught on swiftly, and before they knew it, they were receiving horror stories from teachers all over the country. What was going on in the Des Moines school system was apparently a microcosm of the rest of the U.S. Out of these stories came the novel.

This book is, they declare, fiction, but responses from teachers across the nation suggest that though the story line may be fiction, the circumstances in which the characters function are as real as it gets.

Newton and Kauffman waste no time setting the tone of the book. On the second page we are smacked right in the face by this line from a scene describing the central character’s last day of summer break: “Karen Merchant taught English at Martha Y. Bancroft Senior High. She didn’t want to go back.”

Naturally enough, we immediately begin to wonder WHY she does not want to go back.

Six pages later, when she considers the chiseled message above the entrance to the main building of Bancroft, THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YE FREE, and acknowledges that “Considering the state of public education, she sometimes felt ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’ might be more appropriate,” we KNOW why she does not want to go back. She has accepted the truth that so many of my bedraggled former students have lugged back to me: The American educational system is a chamber of horrors for those bright, dedicated young teachers who enter it with the notion that they just might make a difference, only to discover that they are helpless pawns in a hierarchy in which self-promotion is the order of the day for those in charge, administrators who care very little about the genuine education of students and order in the classroom. All they want is a sparkling reputation for their schools and improved standardized scores, for in that direction lie recognition and accolades and rewards from those even higher up.

It is in the arena of discipline that the skewed standards of today’s school system are so obvious: “Rules for conduct were lost in murky language that enabled boards and administrators to wiggle out when the crunch came. A threat from a wild-eyed parent with a lawsuit on his mind had forced public schools to abandon their standards. For 17 years she had watched the slide. Activist groups of every persuasion exacted their pound of flesh until policy decisions were predicated on fear—fear of lawsuits, fear of ethnic groups, fear of shadows.” Without discipline in the classroom, nothing can be taught. One or two persistently disruptive students, whom the principal either cannot or will not deal with, can completely derail the academic process in a class.

This is a book in which public school administrators catch the heat that they deserve, and no one better personifies that breed of official than Robert Aneyh, the principal at Bancroft: “He worshipped at the altar of public relations. The positive image of his school became his focus. No matter that the image was a facade papering over the cracks. He knew where the glory lay, what excited patrons. Like a cunning military commander, he concentrated his efforts on those sectors where he could win victories, notoriety, and, perhaps, advancement to the ivory tower downtown. He had refashioned Bancroft into a theater for the performing arts. He lionized coaches, music directors, debate and drama instructors, anyone who had a hand in putting students on display. He was just a good old boy, a cheerleader in a gray flannel suit, a ready smile on his face for a winning team, but little room in his mind for academics. To him they were just a bunch of classes on a master schedule.”

BAM! Right on the head! Ask teachers anywhere, and they will confirm the validity of this assessment of far too many administrators: professional educators with little or no experience in the classroom, totally detached from academic reality but with acres of ideas for making their schools look good on paper and in the papers for the big boys downtown.

Nick Staal, a teacher Bancroft and arguably the most powerful character in this book, puts it straight in an address to the school board during a session in which the board is considering whether to suspend a boy who shoved as assistant principal down a stairwell: “Over the years society has nibbled away at our authority. Oh, do we know that students have rights. We can’t tell them how to dress, we can’t control their language, we can’t make them show up. Sometimes you won’t even let us give failing grades for failing performance. You have made us settle for mediocrity. But surely you’ll help us stop them from breaking our bones.”

And a few breaths later: “Board members, you should stand in our shoes. For two decades critics have had their glory years. American teachers have been castigated, maligned, ridiculed, pilloried—Johnny can’t read, can’t write, can’t find Kentucky on a map. The time has come for teachers to scream from the rooftops. This has nothing to do with us. The teaching corps is not incompetent; the system is. This system won’t let teachers teach!”

If you want to get a truly accurate insight into our public school system, A Disgrace to the Profession is the place to begin.

We can’t thank Paul Ruffin enough for his support of our novel. Watch for our next posting, Becoming a Voice, What People Think We Said.

Becoming a Voice, On the Road

Something we didn't expect when our book was published was all the time we'd be spending away from home. We thought we'd be counting money, not miles! However, a real plus about being authors has been taking our show on the road to visit bookstores, book clubs, organizations, and other events.

The first book club that invited us to visit was Read and Feed, whose members are all staff at the Glidden-Ralston school, a one-building district in northwest Iowa. We didn't know what to expect at the dinner meeting except the "feed" part and the "read" part (all of the members had read our book, thanks to the recommendation of the school secretary). That night, club attendance swelled fromt he usual 10 members to 23, including teachers from other districst.

The group asked us questions, told us what they thought about the book, shared favorite parts of the book, and welcomed us wholeheartedly. Perhaps the most memorable comment came from a second-grade teacher. "I didn't realize that a large district would have the same problems as a small one." Bingo! She got it! for her, the story that we created was her own.

So far we've visited over 20 book clubs in Iowa, Minnesota, and Texas. The membership has been an interesting mix of all teachers, some teachers, no teachers, all women, and couples. We really enjoy listening to the discussions of our book. While the topics are usually the same, each group heads off in a different direction. At one club in Des Moines, for instance, a book editor with no children told us she'd voted for the first time in a school board election just because of our book. At a businesswomen's breakfast club, a public relations consultant told us that she thought the book was the perfect mouthpiece for disenfranchised workers.

We'd really love to just listen to groups talk about our book in case our presence changes the direction of the discussions. But we really don't think it does because the readers ask us questions about character motivations and plot devices. The even suggest alternate endings or ideas for the sequel. They tell us what they didn't like or did like about the book. And every time we meet with a new group, we experience with them their excitement about our book.

We enjoy discussing the process of writing and publishing the book. We've focused on this for various large organizations in the Des Moines area and in Minnesota. We've spoken to a graduate fiction writing class at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. And we gave a keynote speech at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall to the master's degree candidates in education. We're giving another one in July to the Iowa Choral Directors Association members.

We also enjoy book signings. Both chains and independent stores in Iowa and Minnesota have invited us to visit for an afternoon or evening of signing and discussion. Neither of us had any idea that a signature in a book was such a prize! But we don't mind inscribing our books at all. In fact, book signings are a great way to have individual conversations with readers about the book.

For both of us, the title "author" is still a little strange. One woman at a teachers' book club dinner meeting sat between us and said she'd never met one author before, let alone two! That's a little humbling because we're really just teachers, too; we just wrote a book.

Watch for our next posting: Paul Ruffin Adds His Voice. 

Becoming a Voice, The Stuart Book Dump

“On a trip to Colorado, I stopped at a gas station at the Stuart, Iowa, exit, and because my credit card didn’t work at the pump, I had to go inside. As I waited in line, I saw a display of A Disgrace to the Profession along with a review from the Des Moines Register. I read the review while waiting in line and decided to buy the book. I threw it on the dash of my car, and I didn’t touch it until a week after I returned from Colorado. I picked it up about 9:00 one evening and couldn’t put it down. I read late into the night and finished it the first thing the next morning. I found myself getting more and more emotionally involved with each chapter.” Ron Sears, PEI Voice (the Professional Educators of Iowa newsletter)

Our most surprising retail site has been the Stuart book dump. The misleading label “book dump” describes a stand-alone floor container that displays books. And in this case, it really does stand alone—in a BP gas station/convenience store along Interstate 80 on the edge of Stuart, a town in west central Iowa.

Charles was born in and grew up in Stuart. Although he now resides in Ames, Iowa, he lived on a farm near Stuart during the majority of his teaching career. Readers of A Disgrace to the Profession will also recognize Stuart as Nicholas Staal’s hometown. (We first called the town Crescent and then decided to just pick a real place.) Tom Newton, Charles’ son and co-owner of the BP station, suggested that we put the book dump there.

We really thought the Stuart market was saturated. After all, Charles has many, many friends there, and the majority of them already own the book. We did a fund-raiser for the Stuart Public Library and sold and signed books for almost 3 hours; after that, the library continued to sell books. We also appeared at Good Egg Days, Stuart’s annual summer festival.

But the Stuart book dump has been a great retail outlet for us; the book continues to sell well. Maybe it’s the location of the station—part way between Omaha and Des Moines and within view of the interstate. Maybe it’s because those waiting to pay for their gas and snacks read the reviews on the display and pick up the book out of curiosity. Maybe it’s what Cleta Sullivan, the manager, tells them while they’re looking at the book. What we do know is that some people have bought one book heading east or west on their round-trips; then on the way home, those same people have bought more books. The manager recalls that a school administrator from Illinois purchased one heading west and 10 when he returned heading east.

Ron Sears, the retired teacher who bought a book on his way to Colorado, bought 20 more books after he returned home. He wrote an article about the book for the PEI Voice. That article resulted in the book’s submission to Education Matters, the publication of the Professional Educators of America, who called it “the most popular of all the books reviewed by our staff and the book review council over the past several years. If ever there was a powerful, moving, and clear statement of what ails American public schools and the institutional barriers facing good teachers attempting to really educate our young people, this is it.”

You can’t buy publicity like that!

Watch for our next posting: Becoming a Voice, On the Road.

Becoming a Voice, The Power of Word of Mouth

“My wife read this last night. She wants every teacher in her building to have this.”

“You’re spreading it around, eh? You must like it.”

This exchange between George Moore and Nicholas Staal in A Disgrace to the Profession, our novel, describes how word of an underground newspaper spread. The same thing happened with our novel: Readers found the book, read it, and then told their friends about it. They bought copies to give to others. In fact, salespeople at the local Borders told us that they’d never had so many book buyers comment on a book while purchasing it. “I’m going to send this to my niece, my old roommate, my dad, my college teacher, etc.,” they’d announce at the cash register.

We watched book sales grow exponentially as one or a few readers would hear about the novel in an area. We’d get an order or two, and a then a flood would come in from bookstores, the local library, and individuals. (That’s one of the perks of self-distribution—we get to see where the book is going!)

We’re pleased that we’ve been invited to book club meetings and bookstore signings in Iowa, Minnesota, and Texas. The first book club we attended was Read and Feed, a group of teachers from the Glidden-Ralston school district in northwest Iowa. The school secretary in the K-12 building found the book and recommended it to the group. Twenty-three people attended the dinner meeting, and the group only has 10 members! The manager of Prairie Lights in Iowa City told us that the store had to carry the book because of the persistence of customers.

We know that school board members and teachers’ organization representatives have purchased books to give to other members of their groups. Graham Gillette of the Des Moines School Board wrote us, “A Disgrace to the Profession should be standard issue for teachers so that they know they’re not alone. [It] should be mandatory for administrators and school board members to remind them about those struggling to teach. [It] should be read by every adult who cares about education.”

Paula Cain, a terminal cancer patient living in Iowa City, called to thank us for writing the book. “I’m just glad I got to read it before I die,” she said. Friends in Belmond, her former residence, had told her of the book. Then she told a group in Iowa City, “the subversives,” she called them, and word spread. When Paula died, her friends in Belmond asked us to donate two books to the public library in her memory.

We got an order from Portland, Oregon, from a woman who heard about the book from someone in California who heard about the book from someone in Missouri—and so it goes.

The book has turned up on Internet chat rooms, on organizations’ newsletters, and in comments on many home pages such as those for Project Fit America and the University of Delaware’s Research and Development Center. We found this comment on BiologyBooks.net (and we don’t even know where the company is or how to contact it!): “A Disgrace to the Profession is the best book written by teachers about teachers.”

We know that word of mouth has been our strongest marketing tool, stronger than all the press coverage. Not everyone has access to or even reads newspaper and magazine reviews. However, a recommendation from one friend to another carries with it the strength of sincerity. As one reader told us just this week, “Every teacher I know respects your work and thanks you for telling the truth.” What is this type of praise worth? Priceless!

Watch for our next posting: Becoming a Voice, the Stuart Book Dump.

Becoming a Voice, How the Book Took Off

“Most teachers will enjoy this paperback. . . . Most administrators will want to burn it.” Marc Hansen, Des Moines Register

How do three unknowns in Des Moines with no budget and limited marketing skills sell a book? We persuaded two local bookstores, Borders Books in West Des Moines and Big Table Books in Ames, to take a few copies. Then Marc Hansen of the Des Moines Register wrote an article about it—and the book took off. Within one week after his column, the first printing was gone.

We hit the airwaves, too. Gretchen appeared on a local radio talk show where Steve Deace, the host, called the book “required reading for all teachers and parents.” She also did a live interview with Marcus McIntosh on the KCCI-TV noon news. The book sold out at both stores. The Des Moines Public Library bought seven copies.

About that time, Christian Gurney and Dick Kirsner from KGInterdev read our novel and GAVE us a Web site, www.disgracetotheprofession.com. That made information about the book—and the means to order it—available worldwide. Monitoring Web hits became our passion; we were thrilled and excited to mark its progress around North America. We printed twice more, increasing the number of books each time.

Jane Burns of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote a review. Our Web site had over 1,600 hits in 24 hours. We heard from bookstores all over Minnesota and some from Wisconsin. Her column, “Des Moines Book Creates Stir Among Teachers,” was also syndicated in papers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts (perhaps others). We printed two more times.

Tim Schmitt, writer for Point Blank, one of Des Moines’ alternative newspapers, called the book “the brutal truth.” Mike Kilen, also of the Des Moines Register, featured our novel in the “Iowa Life” section; the subhead announced, “Little Book, Big Message.” His column was also syndicated nationally and was listed with a link on the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) e-mail “InBox.” Pam England discussed the book in her weekly column, “Whim Whams,” in the Adams County Free Press. Omaha-World Herald columnist Bob Glissmann read the book during a snowstorm and called the next day to schedule an interview for an article.

We landed in some magazines, too. The Iowan featured the book in the “Iowa Authors” column. Kellye Carter Crocker’s “A Is for Effort” in Pages told the nation that “teachers around the country are cheering the spot-on depiction of the bureaucratic red tape and petty, image-obsessed administrators that make it so difficult for them to focus on their primary job—teaching.” And we were thrilled when the American Library Association’s Book List gave us a very positive review.

What about our book led to this publicity? Pam England: “Lively, concise writing … depicts a small cast of memorable and sometimes eerily familiar characters.” Tim Schmitt: “The story flows nicely, the characters are engaging and real, and the problems are presented in a way that is understandable and never preachy.” Education Matters: “A Disgrace to the Profession has proven to be the most popular of all the books reviewed by members of our staff and our book review council over the past several years.” Whitney Scott in Book List: The book is a “roman engagé [that presents] the all-too-credible circumstances that define [readers’] lives.” Jane Burns: “It’s contagious.”

Watch for our next posting: Becoming a Voice, the Power of Word of Mouth.