Reporter Larry Slonaker took a one year leave of absence from The Mercury News to fulfill a lifelong dream of teaching in a California public school (using an emergency teaching credential). Surprised as much by his own deficiencies as by his students' woeful lack of skills, he deems his stint as a seventh grade language arts teacher "surprising, irritating, elevating, frustrating," but most of all, hard. See "My year as a teacher," by Larry Slonaker, The Mercury News, August 25, 2002.
