Permission to Teach chronicles forty-one years of teaching in elementary, junior high, and college classrooms. With humor, wit, patience, spontaneity, imagination, and endless persistence, Jeanne Nordstrom faced the challenges some students brought to class on a daily basis: opposition to learning, laziness, and the "you can't make me" attitude. Besides guiding the intellectual development of her students, she also dealt with the impact of forces outside her classroom, including state mandates in curriculum and the ever-increasing testing demands. In this era of exceptional change, the classroom went from chalkboards to computers. In overcoming the challenges-teaching in a construction zone, dealing with demands from administrators, and coping with the death of a cherished coworker-her primary goals focused on student growth: mastering the requisite academic skills, inspiring students to reach for their best, and fostering student self-reliance. Challenges and difficulties in her classroom took a back seat to student excitement when they exclaimed, "Now I get it " or "Look what I did."