Scratch Where It Itches

Anthony Augustus Angelo's earliest childhood memories revolve around his Italian
American family who did everything the Catholic Church and his grandfather dictated, and
continues through his unlikely metamorphosis into a public school English teacher. He
speaks frankly about his own pitiful education, and the education of his students in the forty
years he wielded the chalk.
For Triple A, Ant'ny, or, as the kids called him, Tony, the broken English that filled his
adolescent years came as an inspiration from his mother and condemnation from his
totalitarian and often drunk grandfather. Loosely based on the life of author Tony Rotondo,
Scratch Where It Itches: Confessions of a Public School Teacher, shares his memories of life
in the 1940s and 1950s in a small industrial town in southeastern Pennsylvania. Mr. Angelo
reminisces about his education in Catholic and public schools where his cheeks-facial and
gluteal-bear the brunt of mean-spirited nuns during the good ol'days filled with poverty,
pasta, and penance.
Today, Mr. Angelo, a husband and father of three, is as hapless in the home as he is
outstanding in the classroom. But his real itch is the state of education, both public and
parochial. He thinks it stinks, and he wants you to know why.