Ms. Moffett's First Year guts & glory the work of a mature

the work of a mature and accomplished novelist

Each encounter awakens in her memories from her childhood-memories of the abuse and racism she experienced at the hands of her mother—and forces her to confront the darkness in her past

into frantic overachievement

and young women were its vanguard

Ms. Moffett's First Year guts & glory the work of a matureIn summer of 2000, legal secretary Donna Moffett answered an ad for the New York City Teaching Fellows program, which sought to recruit "talented professionals" from other fields to teach in some of the city's worst schools. Seven weeks later she was in a first grade classroom in Flatbush, Brooklyn, nearly completely unprepared for what she was about to face. New York Times education reporter Abby Goodnough followed Donna Moffett through her first