She was also prepared for her kids to dislike her, and for any physical danger she might encounter. She was even ready, if necessary, to use the body holds she'd been taught in her college course on Classroom Management. Codell was no pushover; she'd learned from her mentor that being a villain could be an effective way to raise the standards in the classroom. To avoid the pitfalls many first-year teachers face, Codell explained to the class on the first day of school how mean she was (she even wore pointy black boots, to add to the effect). She also told them to call her Madame Esmé, rather than Ms. Codell. "Mrs. is short for mistress, and I'm nobody's mistress," she explained. "I'm too old for Miss, and if I said Ms., most of you would call me Mrs. by accident, and that would get on my nerves." Frivolous as it may have seemed, she felt it was a powerful lesson in self-definition,

Her nonconformist moniker didn't go over well with the school principal, Mr. Turner. Despite her preparation for teaching, Codell couldn't have been prepared for her tense relationship with Turner -- a man who called her late at night to solicit ideas for which she received no credit -- and the grim realities of administrative politics.

Codell kept a journal of all her successes, failures and observations throughout her first year of teaching. Her book "Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year" released this spring by Algonquin Books, is full of surprising tales of administrative corruption, personal insights into her students and hilarious tales of fifth-grade exploration -- both hers and those of her kids. Codell's rare candor and fireball integrity shine through this very funny and honest document of hard-won educational experience. She is now a "children's literature specialist," an elementary school librarian who teaches literature to students in kindergarten through 8th grade. Salon recently spoke with Codell by phone from her home in Chicago.

One of the things that's so surprising about your book is how dishy it is. Because it's a diary, you're able to expose all of the problems that you saw in the school.

Also Today Trading places A first-year teacher turns the tables on an unruly student. An excerpt from "Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year."   Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year

When I wrote it, I never thought it was going to be published. It was thoughtfully edited, but it wasn't heavily edited. The real feelings about my teaching experience come through, for better or for worse. One of the hard parts about having it published is, it doesn't always show my best side, but I think that it shows education in an honest way and in a way that I as a teacher was having trouble finding in the literature.

When you first got the school you were just out of college, and you had an energy that a lot of people who'd been teaching there for a long time didn't have. What sorts of things did you learn in college that you wanted to explore?

I went to a low-key commuter state college that I felt really prepared me beautifully for my experience as a teacher in an urban setting. They taught us really basic things. For instance, they taught us how to use equipment that was over 20 years old, because they knew that's what we would encounter in city schools. So we learned to do things like run old opaque projectors and other strange, dusty things.

They also taught us a lot of theory. I remember when I first started my education courses, they talked a lot about B. F. Skinner and behavioral modification. I thought, "Oh that's so fascist! How could they even think of doing things like that. Children aren't rats in mazes!" But by the end of my first year, I wanted to be Skinner's intern. I used him all the time, and I would have had a very different year had I not been well-versed in his theories. Just being sensitive to the children's stages of development, I think I was a better teacher. A lot of people in education courses think that this is just theory, it doesn't really apply to the real world. But it applied for me.

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