I just finished writing a book very close to my heart: My Son Ray and Me: Thirty Years of Growing Up Together. It’s about my relationship with my son and how it has progressed from the day he was born through his thirtieth year. It’s also about my striving to learn how to be a good father.

Culled from my 1981-2011 journals, this book conveys my true feelings for my son, both positive and negative, as he was growing into a man.  While writing the journal entries, I had no idea that they would someday constitute a book.  As a result, my fatherly concerns, emotions and imperfections are openly revealed.

“Joseph Sutton has written a very important book that describes, over the course of thirty years, his relationship with his son Ray. …It is, in my opinion, a must-read for men approaching fatherhood, those currently involved in the initial stages of childrearing, or those overseeing their sons’ maturation as they transition from adolescence to early adulthood and beyond.” —Psychologist Richard Vogel, Ph.D.

I am presently in search of an agent.

Marty Lurie, KNBR 680 AM, interviewing Joseph Sutton www.knbr.com/portals/3/podcasts/giants/pregame/0522josephsutton.mp3

John Rothmann, KGO 810 AM, interviewing Joseph Sutton and his son Ray http://dl.dropbox.com/u/34222979/KGO%20Interview.mp3

San Francisco writer Joseph Sutton’s new book, The Year the Giants Won the Series, can be found at most Bay Area bookstores and online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, Smashwords.com and Google Books.

I just finished reading an article on the Internet—”What is it Like to Teach Black Students?”—by Christopher Jackson, a white history teacher who recently taught in a predominantly black high school in a southeast state. I’m white and I once taught in an all black high school in South Central Los Angeles in the late 1960s. I know the times are different, but I was appalled by the downright negative attitude Mr. Jackson had of his students. He seemed to be expressing the thoughts of a Ku Klux Klan member, characterizing his students as vicious, loud, unruly and stupid. He succeeded in stating every negative stereotype a teacher could have of black students, making them out to be less than human. To my amazement, most of the people who responded to Jackson’s article actually agreed with him. If it wasn’t for an incident that took place at Fremont High School in South Central L.A. back in 1969, I might have ended up seeing my black students in the same light as Mr. Jackson.

It was the beginning of my third semester at Fremont. Sam Perkins, an 11th grader in my U.S. History class, approached me and asked, “Can I teach the class tomorrow?” Being that Sam was one of the most intelligent students I had, I wholeheartedly consented to his request. I taught history the conventional way my first two semesters at Fremont. I gave book assignments, written assignments, tests and grades. The result was that two-thirds of my students could care less about what was going on in class. I was butting my head against a brick wall of apathy. But that wall came tumbling down the day after Sam Perkins taught “his” class. From that day forward, any student who wanted to teach could teach anything he or she wanted. I wasn’t an authority figure anymore; I was one with my students.

What did my students teach? They led discussions on Black Power, the Vietnam War, capital punishment, violence in schools, premarital sex, the grading system, drugs, freedom, police harassment and whether I was teaching them or not. They debated a major issue of the day once a week. They held trials, signed petitions and dropped notes and essays of their own accord into an Ideas and/or Complaints box, notes and essays they knew would be read to all five of my classes. Due to the democratic setting of the classroom, I believe my students ended up learning the most important lesson of all: to think for themselves.

If you want to read a viewpoint that stands high above Mr. Jackson’s viewpoint of black students, then I recommend you read my novel A Class of Leaders.

To read Mr. Jackson’s article, go to: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-what-is-it.html

If you want to hold a real, physical book written by Joseph Sutton, you can order from this website or you can walk into or call any bookstore in the United States and order from them.

If you are a Kindle reader interested in any of Joseph Sutton’s books at a very low price, click here: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8M4DW

If you are an e-book reader interested in any of Joseph Sutton’s books at a very low price online, click here: www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Joseph+Sutton or here: www.scribd.com/josephsutton

It may have taken him over 40 years to get his book published, but San Francisco author Joseph Sutton is proud and excited about his latest novel A Class of Leaders. Set in 1969 at a black ghetto high school in South Central Los Angeles, the names have been changed but the words of the students are taken from Sutton’s real life experience as a teacher.

“I was 29 in 1969,” said Sutton. “I was single, young and idealistic. So much was happening back then: drugs, the sexual revolution, Black Power, the Vietnam war…it was a very turbulent time in our nation’s history and I got caught up in it as a teacher.”

The novel is written with actual student comments taken from an “Ideas and/or Complaints” box that Joshua Sampson, the teacher-character in the novel, has set on his desk. “I really had an ‘Ideas and/or Complaints’ box for the students to freely express themselves,” said Sutton. “Each day they would write down what they thought about the subjects we discussed in class. The comments concerned the powerful social and cultural changes that were taking place as seen through the eyes of African-American students.”

When asked why it took so long for A Class of Leaders to get published, Sutton answered, “I kept sending it out and it kept getting rejection after rejection. I also kept revising it over the years—at least a dozen times. I always thought it deserved publication and never gave up on it. Finally, after forty years, it found a publisher.” —Jonathan Farrell, Sunset Beacon