No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom

offers readers a window into the stories of teachers and students as they struggle to be successful in our test-obsessed culture. "Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story.” Those words of the beloved Fred Rogers, star of the long-running PBS children’s show serve as the catalyst for the narrative poems that detail the author’s experiences as a teacher. The reader will discover some of the emotional baggage that many adolescents carry, baggage that interferes with their ability to focus and to learn in school, and will find out what’s actually happening in today’s public school classrooms. Readers will encounter many people to cheer for and many “reforms” that deserve questioning when they meet the students and teachers of