This teacher narrative draws on several years of teaching children and adolescents who are deemed severe emotionally disordered by the public school system. The stories told in this volume are written as a means inquiry into constraints and possibilities of working meaningfully with students who are often resistant and untrusting. The book provides a multilayered contextual analysis into the politics of difference and how they are played out in four public schools over eight years. Because the narrative evolves out of life in the classroom, it broaches a broad range of topics from violence to curriculum, from fear to love.