Throwing the Hammer

Paranoid administrators, interdepartmental feuds, quirky staff members, and an eccentric headmaster: welcome to Winston Grant High School.Mark Patterson has a master’s degree in physics, wants to do nothing more than surf and ski, and believes that high school teaching will be the cushy job of his dreams. He receives a rude awakening when he becomes a physics teacher at Winston Grant, a begrudging little brother amidst rival private school heavyweights. From the outset, Mark must tiptoe through a virtual minefield of Procrustean rules, coddling parents, scheming colleagues, and, of course, teen-aged students. Things don’t go well, inside or outside the classroom. His students call him Mr. Goofegg. His football team is pathetic. His lunch-table kids behave like Neanderthals. His teaching supervisor, aka the “education implementation strategist,” criticizes him for using equations. His colleagues have even organized a betting pool for when he will get fired. And when Mark discovers that a weak student in his class is a physics genius, he finds himself caught in the middle of a conflict between father and son, a conflict which could destroy the young man’s potential. Or help Mark find his. Read more