THE WARRIOR

In this debut memoir, a substitute
teacher and job coach recounts his meandering career, artistic efforts, and
thoughts on God.

After a mediocre performance as a
college student, Palasciano became a substitute teacher. He was sorely
unprepared for the experience, especially when compelled to teach subjects with
which he had virtually no experience, let alone expertise: math, music, fashion
design, and Spanish were among the list of daunting topics that he faced.
Later, after moving back to San Diego, he landed a position as a job coach—he
mentored and supervised disabled workers. Meanwhile, he was episodically
devoted to artistic pursuits, mostly creative writing. But he was afflicted
with a self-destructive pride: “I recalled being confounded by the deluded
awesomeness of my own thoughts.” Palasciano, though, found that an
authentic relationship with God properly knocked him off his “fake pedestal”:
“I can testify that there has never been a more broken, defeated and
undeserving person who God found and brought out into life than me. Before God
pulled me out of that imaginary river, I had never sought His help.” The
author’s remembrance is more impressionistic than an exhaustive, linear
chronicle of his life, and it jumps freely across a wide spectrum of topics,
including recreational drug use, the nature of artistic imagination, and the
best ways to control a classroom of students. Palasciano’s account, especially
of his time as a substitute teacher, can be hilariously self-effacing—he was
once replaced by another substitute in the middle of class for his
incompetence. In addition, his recollection is brimming with thoughtful aperçus,
especially about teaching and art. But those same insights often have a
truncated, unfinished character, as if the author is communicating a conclusion
and not the philosophical route that led him to it. For example, he
tantalizingly proclaims that “successful teachers got control by love” but
never explains precisely what that means. As a result, the memoir reads like a
personal journal not intended for public consumption, a draft to be completed
later.

An amusing but rambling series of
recollections.