2008, Jane Street Press
“In Thorough & Efficient, Peter E. Murphy gives us a real depiction of the malaise of so-called “inner city” education. Murphy, who taught for 29 years at Atlantic City High School, is relentlessly accurate and often funny as he renders one indelible moment after another. In doing so he replaces the Hollywood script of the “hero” teacher, sacrificing everything so the orchestra can rise at the incipient miracle, with the realities of violence, indifference, intractable corruption, and everyday effort, skill, and decency. If there’s any heroism here, it is that Murphy never romanticizes his job or his students, which is probably why he lasted so long.”
Dump
How he did it, assume it was a he, amazed
even the most cynical. The guards on patrol
in the corridor had seen nothing.
Alerted by the stench, the drawing teacher
found the load neatly curled like soft serve.
How’d he do it? everyone asked, not why?
It has been months since the shitting began—
a classroom here, a classroom there,
here smeared on a window, there
a teacher’s desk. It brings out the best in us,
one teacher joked. Another called it art.