I worked for 4 years in the corporate world of engineering before being laid off. Wanting to try something new, I entered the world of teaching and became a 3rd grade math teacher. I had gone to private school and had a good, happy childhood, so the kids I encountered in my class were like nothing I had ever encountered before. I would tell friends and family stories about what my kids had done or said (or what their PARENTS had done or said), and they would hardly believe me.

So I knew I had to put it down on paper and turn it into a book. The idea to form it into a series of emails came later when I saw I could incorporate stories about my old engineering colleagues as a pretty accurate parallel to what was going on in the classroom.