Book excerpt: Confessions of an English Teacher: A Memoir of My Teaching Years was written to share some of my extraordinary experiences teaching English at six high schools and seven community colleges in Orange County, California, from 1973 to 2018. I share these memories because they were so disappointing in their discovery. I imagined that as an English teacher, I was prepared to teach the subject I was trained for, but I learned that was far from the truth. My training as an English teacher should have prepared me to teach essential skills. It did not. As I reflect on my teaching at these schools, I discovered that my English degree needed to produce a prepared English teacher for teaching the skills of reading, grammar, and writing. Looking back at what I was mandated to teach revealed a sad truth: teaching English to high school and college students was filled with traditions that needed to change. With what I discovered to be traditional problems in teaching English, I offer recommendations for change for high schools and community colleges.