180 Days: A Teacher’s Diary

Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Sofia Faye Burke and her novel 180 Days: A Teacher’s Diary Through One Epic School Year.

 

Author’s description of the book:

180 Days is a fly on the wall experience into a high school classroom over one full school year (180 days to be exact).

 

Written as a diary by a teacher who was struggling to cope with everything from educational reform to school shootings, this work unfolds via the teachers’ lens of controlled chaos in a broken system. This book takes the reader on a journey from the dilemma of how to make it to the restroom and back before the bell rings to the agony of an active shooter training day, including acceptance of a newfound form of professional development.

 

Mrs. Burke writes about the daily challenges and rewards of life within the four walls of her classroom. The work is gritty, hilarious, and heart breaking at the same time. Hang on, a school year is one wild ride.

Purchase 180 Days on Amazon

Yes there is a giveaway:

Sofia Faye Burke will award a randomly drawn winner a $20 Amazon/BN Gift Certificate.

Enter here to win

My favorite excerpt:

On another fun note, today was fabulous picture day! This is when all students and staff go down to the cafeteria to have their school pictures taken for the yearbook. School photos are a fun notion when presented to you early on in the school year but then you get the images back two months later, suddenly you start talking to yourself, posing questions like: “Is that me?” “Do I look like that?” WTF? Now I just want to avoid the entire school photo process as the images are simply weird. They must have a schoolmarm filter.

Teacher Confessional: Do teachers really swear? Fuckin’ A, yes! We swear on bad days. But not in front of students. Maybe I should start as kids always love the teacher who swears in class. I think they relate and think it’s cool, but those same teachers talk of drinking “juices” and smoking for “medicinal purposes.” Not the best role model in my view.

Day 11: Student started to cry 9th period. Oh, I feel absolutely terrible. But it ended well. She was arguing with me about the directions and I asked her to go out of the room to talk, as I do not like to speak to kids in front of the class regarding discipline if I can avoid it. It just embarrasses students and they resent it.

I met her in the hall and she agreed that she was disrespectful. When you take away the audience, students immediately calm down and talk honestly. But then she broke out in tears and I asked her what was wrong. She told me she is bipolar and so everything is very sensitive for her. I apologized and asked her if she needed a break from class and she took a walk around the hall. She did not want to come back in so I logged off for her. I feel awful for her; you never know what is going on inside the students until you start to peel away those onion layers.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish.

Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

A personal note:

Why feature this book on this blog? Well, my main character Alex is a teacher too, and he and some of his adventures are loosely based on a real life teacher I know.  I read Mrs. Burke’s excerpts with great interest. Sounds like she and Alex could have quite a conversation. I wish her and her book the best of luck!