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Summary: Why would a high school teacher who loves teaching leave school-after half a career in the classroom? Teacher at Point Blank answers this question at a time when concerns about school performance, safety, and teacher attrition are at an all-time and often anxious high. Meditating on subtle and overt forms of violence in secondary public education from an up-close and "pink collar" point of view, Jo Scott-Coe defies cliches and cultural fantasies about teachers. She examines her own workplace as a microcosm of the national compulsory K-12 system, where teachers-now nearly 80 percent women-findthemselves idealized and disparaged, expected to embody the dedication of parents, the coldness of data managers, and the obedience of Stepford spouses. In this groundbreaking memoir in essays, Scott-Coe recounts her own journey to recover a sane and independent voice. Teacher at Point Blank fuses her perspectives as teacher and former student, adult and child, educator and writer. Haunted and compelled forward by memories of a classmate who commits suicide on campus, a former teacher-colleague who dies all alone, Hollywood fantasies of the "ideal teacher," and chronic reports of school violence and increasing gender crime, Scott-Coe reveals how her hopes, past and present, struggle for breath at the point blank of denial, confinement, addiction, isolation, hostility, subliminal eroticism-and, at times, a healthy dose of fear. Jo Scott-Coe 's writing on intersections of education, gender, and violence has appeared in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times , Swink , Memoir (and) , Babel Fruit , Ruminate , and Green Mountains Review .