Teacher/Pizza Guy
Regular price
€19.99
Regular price
€22.99
Sale
Sale price
€19.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Jeff Kass
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Ann Arbor
Author_Jeff Kass
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DCF
COP=United States
delivery
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
education
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
ghazal
High school
Language_English
PA=Available
pay
political
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
public schools second job
salary
Sestina
softlaunch
teaching
wage
working class
Product details
- ISBN 9780814347157
- Weight: 165g
- Dimensions: 147 x 223mm
- Publication Date: 26 Aug 2019
- Publisher: Wayne State University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Teacher/Pizza Guy is a collection of autobiographical poems from the 2016-17 school year in which Jeff Kass worked as a full-time English teacher and a part-time director for a literary arts organization and still had to supplement his income by delivering pizzas a few nights a week. In the collection, Kass is unapologetically political without distracting from the poems themselves but rather adds layers and nuances to the fight for the middle class and for educators as a profession. The timing of this book is beyond relevant. As a public high school teacher in America, Kass's situation is not uncommon. In September 2018, Time published an article detailing the ways in which many public school teachers across the country and in a variety of environments work multiple jobs to help make ends meet. Teacher/Pizza Guy chronicles Kass's experience of teaching, directing, feeding people, and treading the delicate balance of holding himself accountable to his wife and kids, his students, his customers, and his own mental and physical health while working three jobs in contemporary America. The journey of that year was draining, at times daunting, at times satisfying, but always surprising. Many of the ideas for these poems were initially scribbled onto the backs of pizza receipts or scratched out during precious free moments amidst the chaos of the school day. A driving force behind the book is Philip Levine's poem ""What Work Is,"" which Kass believes attempts to examine not only the dignity and complexity of what we think physical, tangible work is but also the exhausting, albeit sometimes fulfilling nature of emotional work. Teacher/Pizza Guy is a funny and relatable collection for readers, thinkers, educators, and pizza lovers everywhere.
Jeff Kass teaches tenth-grade English and creative writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is the founder of the Literary Arts Program at Ann Arbor's teen center, The Neutral Zone, where he was program director for twenty years. He is also the author of the award-winning short story collection Knuckleheads, the poetry collection My Beautiful Hook-Nosed Beauty Queen Strut Wave, and the thriller Takedown. He lives in Ann Arbor with the author Karen Smyte and their children, Sam and Julius.
