This book presents the uncensored diary of a young, beginning elementary school teacher. She started teaching in an inner-city, Chicago public school, where gangs attacked her class and her own students stabbed a substitute with a pencil. The most trying challenges she faced were from administrators who questioned her unconventional techniques (such as dancing with students, roller skating in the hallways, and creating a historical time machine from an old refrigerator), even after she sharply improved her students' standardized test scores and won a prestigious teacher award. The author prettifies nothing about her frenetic, often frustrating first year. (SM)