Outskirts Press works hard to help self-publishing authors make their dreams come true, and we’ve had had the good fortune to work with many talented and successful individuals over the years. For that reason, it’s important to give a nod to the authors who’ve, in turn, contributed to our success. Every now and then, we celebrate one of our successful authors in our Self-Publishing Author Spotlight.
This week Outskirts Press proudly features Frank Stepnowski, self-publishing author of three books, including Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy?, S.C.R.E.W.E.D. An Educational Fairy Tale and Teaching Sucks – But We Love It Anyway!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Frank Stepnowski is your basic grizzly bear: big, warm, surprisingly mobile and perpetually hungry. A study in dichotomy, he would prefer to roll around in the sunshine all day eating healthy foods while scratching himself at will, yet he is not above gutting you with frightening precision should you threaten his mate or cubs. While it is perfectly legal to hunt and/or antagonize him, he possesses a skill set that may manifest itself in an undesirable outcome should you choose to do so. Like most grizzlies, he enjoys salmon, sarcasm, sleeping and the emergence of the marginalized voice in early 1800s American Romanticist literature. Step’s first book, Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy? was very well received by teachers, antisocial deviants and the other creatures of the forest.
Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy?
A refreshingly honest look inside the teaching profession, Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy? is a captivating collection of hilarious stories and unreserved observations from one man’s odyssey in the classroom. With equal parts humanity, insanity and profanity, Frank Stepnowski, a 20-year veteran of the academic wars, offers unique insight into a world everybody knows about but very few understand. “Step” as he was re-christened by his students, pulls no punches in the classroom, and takes no prisoners in his writing debut. The title, which comes from a line that the author heard many times throughout his career, is both a confession and a confirmation. “I wanted a book,” he explains, “that would make people laugh out loud but also open their eyes to just how insane the teaching profession can get. With that in mind, the book is a riotous success, providing searing insight into the classroom and giving an iconoclastic voice to a profession that often goes unheard. Why Are All the Good teachers Crazy? is a wake up call for some, a rallying cry for others, and an invitation to laugh and learn for everyone.
Based on actual events, the vivid imagery, colorful characters, and incendiary dialogue of this nuclear powered novel will take readers on a roller coaster ride that they will be talking about long after the ride is over.
S.C.R.E.W.E.D. An Educational Fairytale
The year is 2012 and the President has passed The Absentee Parent Act, suddenly making parents accountable for the academic and moral shortcomings of their offspring! Legal guardians everywhere turn to the places that have been raising their children for years – the schools. Alas, our current educational system is a farce, a fact suddenly of great concern to the soon to be punished parental population. Meanwhile, in a New Jersey classroom, a frustrated teacher has an epiphany, and soon T.E.A.M. (Trust in our Extreme Alternative Methodology) schools begin to spread across the country, providing the kind of common sense instruction, uncompromising discipline, and political incorrectness that other schools wish they could employ. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished, and an army of antagonists line up to challenge this Brave New School; but Frank Stepnowski, aka: Captain America, and his dedicated band of teachers will not go quietly! The battle lines are drawn, and comedic (sometimes cathartic) chaos ensues. With a delightfully demented cast and enough metaphoric mayhem to power a bulldozer aimed at the educational status quo, S.C.R.E.W.E.D. is another perfect storm of fury, fun and foreshadowing from the gloriously twisted mind that gave you Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy?
Teaching Sucks – But We Love I
t!
“I find it fascinating, and a bit insulting,” confides Frank Stepnowski, the iconoclastic author of Why Are All the Good Teachers Crazy? and S.C.R.E.W.E.D., An Educational Fairytale, “that so many people feel so enabled to criticize teachers. Folks get their homes repaired multiple times, but they don’t automatically think they could be construction workers, plumbers, etc. People and their family members undergo surgeries and visit hospitals, but they don’t instantly assume they could be doctors. I could go on and on and yet, because they went to school, or have children in school, legions of people feel like they know what it is to be a teacher. They’re wrong; and the evidence is in both the children they send us, and the fact that they stand idle, ignorant to so many “educational” decisions being made about our children that could irreversibly damage future generations.” Teaching Sucks – But We Love It is an unapologetic retaliation to those that would blame teachers exclusively for the ills that plague modern education, a wake-up call to the uninformed masses, and a love letter to those good teachers that continue to fight the good fight in the face of nearly insurmountable odds, in a nation that seems to increasingly devalue their importance.
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