Outskirts Press, INC.

This book belongs

on the desk of

every teacher in America!

A refreshingly honest look inside the teaching profession, Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy? is a captivating collection of hilarious stories and unreserved observations from one man’s odyssey in the classroom. With equal parts humanity, insanity, and profanity, Frank Stepnowski, a twenty year veteran of the academic wars, offers unique insight into a world everybody knows about but very few understand. “Step” as he was re-christened by his students, pulls no punches in the classroom, and takes no prisoners in his writing debut. The title, which comes from a line that the author heard many times throughout his career, is both a confession and a confirmation. “I wanted a book,” he explains, “that would make people laugh out loud but also open their eyes to just how insane the teaching profession can get. With that in mind, the book is a riotous success, providing searing insight into the classroom and giving an iconoclastic voice to a profession that often goes unheard. Why Are All the Good teachers Crazy? is a wake up call for some, a rallying cry for others, and an invitation to laugh and learn for everyone.

Based on actual events, the vivid imagery, colorful characters, and incendiary dialogue of this nuclear powered novel will take readers on a roller coaster ride that they will be talking about long after the ride is over.

September 29, 1989

It was NOT a good week for Richard Lovington; he drank used toilet water and got bitten by a gator. Lest you feel sorry for him, I can assure you that he deserved everything he got. Rich Lovington - other than sweetbreads, there was never a more misnamed item on Earth, as he was neither rich nor loving. What he was was a lazy, racist, homophobic, mean-spirited teen-aged white boy that refuted any attempts to educate or improve him morally with an elegant “ go fuck yourself” or “”suck my dick.” I was not flexible enough to do the former nor motivated to do the latter, so I settled for trying to educate the boy in my classroom, a two room trailer with no real heat or air conditioning that I shared with one other teacher and 26 severely emotionally disturbed young men.

So in walks Lovington, late (as he was every day,) and he grabs my travel mug (as he did every day.) I warned him not touch my stuff (as I did every…Oh, you get the point!) and he would proceed to ignore me and take a huge gulp of my coffee, while 13 young criminals wondered why I hadn’t killed him up yet.

“Why ain’t you killed him yet?” asked Kenny, my tour guide from day one and one of my best students.

“Some things are worse than death, Kenny.”

He smiled, “this is gonna be good, ain’t it Step?”

I just smiled