Reynard’s Mirror: Reflections on Teaching Oppositional Adolescents; Letters to a British Psychoanalyst

In a series of witty and moving letters sent to a British psychoanalyst, a California special ed teacher, shares her vivid emotional tales about creating relationships with her very difficult and disturbed adolescents…there is Dawson, a heavy metal fan who has been hospitalized three times for nervous breakdowns; Kent, a bristly 17 year old who wants to have a kindergarten day at school; and, Sonny who loves to shock and bully. They are oppositional, stubborn and refuse to learn. Reynard’s Mirror carries the reader on a roller coaster ride of coping with 11 students, their parents, and the educational bureaucracy. For anyone thinking of entering the field of special education or even of just working with difficult adolescents, this is an eye-opening peek into the joyful, exhausting, fulfilling and heartbreaking world awaiting them. Reynard’s Mirror is not a book that offers recipes. Instead, it offers process, specifically, that of coping with feelings of hatred, love, disgust and delight. Those who struggle with alien feelings of guilt, anger or denial will find relief in these pages. This memoir of a teacher’s reality may help others recognize the sources of their own confusing emotions and find forgiveness for themselves and their oppositional adolescents.