Shirley Willis

Naked Teaching Shirley Willis

Janine Waters never set out to be anyone's hero but at 60 years old, she moves to Arizona and plunges full time into the Wild West version of a middle school in rural northern Arizona--only this time as the rookie. Her classroom is the bad half of a butchered science lab with no budget, no books and no supplies. It is here that Janine has to prove all over again that the only legitimate power a teacher has is to free kids from the cone of shame echoing, "You're dumb, you're lazy and you're worthless." Her odds of success are near zero.



Enter Janine's sad, hilarious and brave classroom at Coyote Crossing Middle School. Meet Heliodoro, Bully Boy, Poet Boy, Peacemaking Girl, Sly Girl, Native American Princess, Bouncing Bonnie, Jug-Eared Ben and their paradigm-spouting principal, Call-Me-Ed, Mr. Edsel. Watch how slashed budgets, apathy, volatile racial prejudice, outrageously profitable standardized tests that never measure anything important and wagon loads of adolescent hormones fuel the minute by minute conflicts in the winner-takes-all education game.



Naked Teaching: A Love Story's stark truths are guaranteed to fuel the debate about how our kids' education can be saved.