[2] She is the author of ten books, including a popular textbook for teachers, Teaching Outside the Box (Jossey-Bass) and the Young Adult novel Muchacho (Knopf) which won awards.
After high school, she enrolled at Indiana University of Pennsylvania but dropped out after a few weeks and enlisted in the Navy in 1971, serving at Clark Air Base in the Philippines.
While working on her graduate thesis in 1989, Johnson began teaching as an intern at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California.
[3] Her memoir, My Posse Don't Do Homework, was based upon her experiences teaching at-risk teens at Carlmont High, where she taught for four years before moving to New Mexico to attend graduate school in creative writing.
In 1995, Johnson taught English at Onate High School in Las Cruces, but left teaching full-time in order to escape the publicity following the movie.