Fred Marmorstein

I'm a former high school English teacher of 20 years plunging into the world of freelance writing.

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Member for: 2 years 3 days
Location: Centreville, Virginia

I've had about 20-30 jobs ranging from chimney mason to bank teller to box maker. (Yes, there really are factories that spew out corrugated brown paper squares right out of a Dickens novel.)

In 1985, after falling two stories through a roof while working as a roofer, I went back to school to get my teaching certification. My B.A. in English and Rhetoric from SUNY-Binghamton back in '81 helped me finish the cert in a year.

I moved to Connecticut from upstate New York where everything reminded me of the inside of a Twinkie minus the creamy filling.

My first teaching stint started in Portland where I lasted three years directing the play, coaching tennis, and teaching everything from Journalism to Advanced Comp. Unfortunately, the principal and I didn't see "eye to eye" on several issues concerning education. Euphemistically translated as your contract will not be renewed.

No job meant I found a job subbing and working as a nurse's aide in a nursing home. I lasted about three months on the night shift, 11-7.

I moved to NYC and enrolled at NYU and received a M.A. in English Education. (thanks, acronyms!) For some reason, normal jobs did not attract themselves to me. I moved to Maryland, got engaged, attended the University of Maryland as a PhD student in Ed. Psych, left after a year, got disengaged, and found myself backpacking alone in Australia on a wonderful walkabout.

When I returned, I got re-engaged and married and moved back to Maryland and began teaching troubled kids in inner city Baltimore which was no more dangerous than when I subbed in NYC -- only more of a commute.

I tired of driving an hour north every day and left for another alternative education experience in Prince William County Virginia. That was dangerous. I taught kids kicked out of the regular schools for fighting, drugs, rape, and even murder. Education really was important.

Thirteen years later, my educational perspective turned cynical; expectations and accountability slowly disappeared from view replaced by public relations and the ever popular gift of enabling which pervades the people and bureaucracy of learning.

I finally decided I had enough when administrators started asking me to change grades.

Since October I have devoted myself full-time to writing. Throughout my entire life I have written fiction and poetry and have been fortunate enough to get things published. And I happy and passionate and ready to work for Parenting Squad.