Rancho Cordova, CA Author Publishes Biography

Behind the Wall, a new book by Connie Steinman, has been released by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc.

Behind the Wall follows a diversely populated suburban city high school with underprivileged students who learn life skills, coping skills, and self-reliance through the lessons of Emerson, taught by a teacher who encourages them to look within to persevere and to beat the odds. Connie Steinman connects and inspires James and his friends who are credit deficient to graduate! This is a book about teaching, learning, and self-reliance. It contains a lesson for all of us.

"Looking for ways to integrate critical social-emotional skills like self-reliance into your English curriculum? Worried about the choices your students are making? You have come to the right place. In an unputdownable teaching memoir, Connie Steinman weaves lessons from Ralph Waldo Emerson into the fabric of her classroom. As her students grapple with Emerson's language and recast his ideas in their own words, they discover ways of rethinking their attitudes towards conformity, dependence, and virtue. Prepare to be inspired."

Carol Jago is a long-time high school English teacher and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is the author of The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis (Heinemann).

"This is a book about teaching, learning, and self-reliance. This is a book that contains lessons for all of us. What is the wall in the book's title, the wall behind which so many of the book's events unfold? Because the book contains so much about education and schools, one might immediately make reference to Pink Floyd's epic work, but there is even more here if that is possible. Here is an escarpment not necessarily built of bricks, an adamantine structure figuratively formed from a dark Maya, a wall of societal illusion and deception that sends a message of impending defeat to those confronting it. Connie and her friends are not vanquished, they are victorious through rapturous transcendence; they stare through the wall and ultimately atomize it using powerful, positive thinking which is in many ways attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson's writing. The dust that is left is the symbolic remains of poverty, discrimination, class struggle, and intimidation that were the wall's former elements. Though written by an English teacher, Behind the Wall is a work built on the poetry of emotions: Behind the Wall is a study of the beauty of imperfection: Behind the Wall is a patchwork quilt fashioned from the fabric of everyday people."
Denis Racine is a retired Secondary English teacher.


About the Author
Connie Steinman is a Deaf teacher and has taught American Sign Language at the same high school for twenty years. She participated in UC Davis Globe Academy to direct students in a scene of Taming of the Shrew, received a Fulbright Scholarship for the China Institute 2015 to study the Silk Road and the Mao Goa Caves, and traveled to India twice for Teach for Peace to learn how to apply Gandhi's philosophy in the classroom.

For more information check out the authors website at www.conniesteinman.com.

Behind the Wall is a 140-page paperback with a retail price of $15.00 (hardbound $28.00, eBook $10.00). The ISBN is 978-1-6853-7442-6. It was published by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For members of the press, to request a review copy, visit our virtual pressroom at https://dorrancepressroom.com/behind-the-wall-1/ or to buy the book visit our online bookstore at https://bookstore.dorrancepublishing.com/behind-the-wall-pb/