About the author:

After 30 years of working as a journalist, Sullivan took a turn in the road she never expected to take. You might call it accidental. But after training and certification designed for professionals shifting from other careers into education, she found herself standing in front of a seventh grade classroom.

In an instant she could feel the adrenalin pumping and came to realize that she had found the perfect place. It demanded in-the-moment decision making, social skills, energy, imagination, risk, humor — all of the things she craved. But that wasn’t all. Right in front of her eyes her students were morphing, getting glimpses of their adult selves, undergoing the metamorphosis of 12 to 13. This was a better story than she’d ever covered as a reporter, and she was there to take it down.

Names have been changed and 13 years have been selectively absorbed into one year. But it is all true. And, it is nothing like you remember seventh grade to be.