Perseus Academic: Teacher at Point Blank by Jo Scott-Coe

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 clichés 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 — find themselves 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.

For nearly twenty years, Jo Scott-Coe has worked as a writer, teacher, and scholar at institutions throughout Southern California. Her writing on intersections of education, gender, and violence has appeared in many publications, including The Los Angeles Times, Swink, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Ninth Letter, Memoir(and), So to Speak, Babel Fruit, Ruminate, Green Mountains Review, and Hotel Amerika. Her interview with essayist Richard Rodriguez appeared in Narrative Magazine, and she has an interview with novelist Margaret Atwood forthcoming in the same venue. Her journalistic analysis of Adams v. Los Angeles Unified School District, a startling 8-year legal case of student-on-teacher sexual harassment, currently appears as a chapter in (Re)Interpretations: The Shapes of Justice in Women's Experience (Cambridge Scholars Press). In 2009, her work received a Pushcart Special Mention in nonfiction as well as a Notable listing in Best American Essays.

After giving up her 11-year tenure teaching high school English, Scott-Coe earned an MFA at the University of California Riverside (UCR), where she studied as a graduate Fellow and was recognized as Outstanding Teaching Assistant of the Year in 2005. Afterwards, she lectured in creative writing, composition, women's literature, and speech at UCR, Riverside Community College, and The University of Phoenix. She also holds a Master's degree in English Rhetoric and Composition.

Scott-Coe now works as a new Assistant Professor of English and creative writing at Riverside Community College in Southern California. She is a member of California Poets in the Schools, PEN U.S.A., The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), and Phi Beta Kappa. She lives with her husband in the Inland Empire of Southern California, where she also sits on the advisory board for the Inlandia Institute, a new organization dedicated to promoting regional literary arts.