If you want to understand me a bit better...

Or at least what I have done/will do with my former/upcoming new job, then I would recommend that you read Daniel Robb's Crossing the Water: Eighteen Months on an Island Working with Troubled Boys - A Teacher's Memoir. While there are certainly differences between the program he worked in (from what I can tell, partway into the novel, the program described there is more of a wilderness program, while mine is more of a suburban setting that is closer to a lock-down facility), the challenges are much the same.

Nice reading this while watching my current crop of public school students taking their final exams today. Will miss most of them (and a few that I think would be much more interesting to talk with 10 years from now, after they have had more life experiences), but certainly am looking forward to working again with troubled teens.