Teach Me How to Work and Keep Me Kind: The Possibilities of Literature and Composition in an American High School

by Joseph F. Riener

Overview

Teach Me How to Work and Keep Me Kind offers the content of AP English classes. This book intends to serve as a guide and encouragement to educators by showing what can be possible when a teacher enjoys the freedom to find their own voice. Poems, novels, short stories, essays, and plays become the means to have conversations with young people about love and life, peace and war, virtue and vice, joy and grief. The author/teacher describes creating an environment and curriculum where students could greatly improve their writing skills. He explains the rationale for his presentations and literary selections. Even those who missed a thoughtful introduction to literature the first time around may find a useful beginning in what’s presented here. Seeking to engage in the ongoing educational debate in the US, the writer demonstrates how the material presented in these courses can contribute to students’ genuine artistic and literary education. These volumes suggest that such reading and writing prepare young people to be good citizens in a democracy.

• offers curriculum for AP English classes
• explains how to present challenging material to high school students
• presents a method to increase students’ writing skills
• useful as an introduction to literature (for those who missed it)
• stresses the value of a humanistic approach to literature
• argues against Common Core Curriculum homogenization

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475816945
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/18/2015
Edition description:	Volume 1
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Joseph F. Riener has been involved with education and its issues for a lifetime. He most recently taught AP English at a large urban high school for 17 years.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION TO BOTH VOLUMES

CHAPTER 1
FIRST FOUR CLASSES
“Tiger Face” by Stephen Dunn, “The Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Frost, “Practice Makes Perfect – But Only If You Practice Beyond the Point of Perfection” by Dan Willingham; “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of the Imagination” by J.K. Rowling

CHAPTER 2
SOME INITIAL REMARKS ABOUT ESSAY WRITING

CHAPTER 3
FIFTH AND SIXTH CLASSES
“Keith” and other stories, by Ron Carlson; “The Cost Conundrum” by Atul Gawande

CHAPTER 4
THE FIRST NOVEL:
Cider House Rules by John Irving

CHAPTER 5
FIRST NONFICTION BOOK
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

CHAPTER 6
FIRST REAL PIECE OF ANALYSIS
“The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

CHAPTER 7
A MODERN WOMAN
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

CHAPTER 8
ADDING MALCOLM GLADWELL TO THE MIX
“The Talent Myth” and “Million-Dollar Murray” by Malcolm Gladwell, available at Gladwell.com

CHAPTER 9
HENRY JAMES AND A WEE BIT OF QUEER THEORY
“The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James

CHAPTER 10
HABEAS CORPUS DOESN’T MEAN MUCH UNTIL THEY PUT THE HANDCUFFS ON YOU
“Do You Want Your Kid to Disappear?” by Nadya Labi

CHAPTER 11

EMBRACING HOLDEN
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger


CHAPTER 12
RANT NUMBER ONE: REMARKS ON COMMON CORE WRITING STANDARDS

CHAPTER 13
THE AMERICAN HEART IN ITS DARKNESS: RACISM IN LITERATURE AND LIFE
“The Big American Crime” an essay in The New York Review of Books by Edmund Morgan, poems by Phillis Wheatley, “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville

CHAPTER 14
SPENDING AWHILE WITH HUCK AND JIM
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

CHAPTER 15
RANT NUMBER TWO: ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF TEACHING ANYONE TO WRITE

CHAPTER 16
POETS AND SOME OF THEIR POEMS
poems by Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Stanley Kunitz

CHAPTER 17
A FORAY INTO THEORY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
The Ghost Map, The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, by Steven Johnson

CHAPTER 18
HEROES, THE TRUTH, AND THE DANGER TO US ALL
consideration of some people talked about in Speak Truth to Power, Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World, by Kerry Kennedy, photographs by Eddie Adams, edited by Nan Richardson; “Examined Life” by Malcolm Gladwell; selections from Collapse, How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed, by Jared Diamond, Malcolm Gladwell’s review of the book, and a Jared Diamond review of other books

CHAPTER 19
HAPPY ENDING: MOVING AWAY FROM THE CANON
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

CHAPTER 20
LIVING WITH THE UNLIVEABLE
The Center Cannot Hold, My Journey Through Madness, by Elyn Saks

CHAPTER 21
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR STUDENT WRITING

CHAPTER 22
HOW EVIL HARMS THE PARTICIPANT
“Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

CHAPTER 23
THE POWER OF YOUTH AND LOVE
The House of Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

CHAPTER 24
A JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS
readings: “An Anatomy of Melacholy”, Andrew Solomon;a selection from Night Falls Fast, Understanding Suicide, by Kay Redfield Jamison; “Bartleby the Scrivner” by Herman Melville

CHAPTER 25
HOW TO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER
The Checklist Manifesto, How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande

CHAPTER 26
WHAT DOES MODERN MEAN?
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot

CHAPTER 27
TWO POINTS OF VIEW:
Teens and Oppression; Strangers in Our Midst

CHAPTER 28
THOUGHTS ON TEACHING STUDENTS TO TAKE AP ENGLISH EXAM’S “FREE RESPONSE” ESSAY PORTION

CHAPTER 29
YOU’RE GOING TO SCHOOL WITH BIGGER THOMAS
Native Son by Richard Wright

CHAPTER 30
POEM FOR A SNOWY DAY
“Oatmeal Deluxe” by Stephen Dobyns

CHAPTER 31
MOST IMPORTANT ESSAY EVER

CHAPTER 32
WHY WALT WHITMAN STILL SINGS
“Song of Myself” and Preface from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

CHAPTER 33
SOME REMARKS ABOUT GRADES

CHAPTER 34
ONCE A TEACHER....

CHAPTER 35
A VERY LARGE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF OUR TIME
The Exonerated by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen
“The Caging of America” by Adam Gopnik

CHAPTER 36
LAST NOVEL - RECOVERING FROM TRAUMA
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

CHAPTER 37
GLADWELL’S CHARMING CHALLENGE
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

CHAPTER 38
A GHOST, MADNESS, GENIUS, ROMANCE, AND A HAPPY ENDING!
Proof by David Auburn


CHAPTER 39
LAST CLASS

APPENDICES

Editorial Reviews

So very helpful to have access to a master teacher’s thoughts, in a clear and careful layout. Riener loves literature, and deeply appreciates the craft of writing, and its communicative and creative opportunities. What is surprising in this text is the depth in which Riener cares about ideas, and about his students as human beings in the process of learning to live their lives. This book is a terrific coaching guide for any new teacher to AP English courses.

Dr. Shannon Payne

As a young adult, I experienced Mr. Riener’s teaching first hand. The ideas I explored in his classroom, and the written and spoken dialogue we shared during my junior and senior years, have shaped my worldview and the way I approach literature and writing in powerful and lasting ways.

When I became an English teacher myself, I took much from the experience of having been in his class to inform the way I engaged my students, discussed texts, and encouraged them to push themselves as writers and thinkers. I am extremely excited that Mr. Riener’s unique perspective on teaching will be available to other educators.

Kate Winterkorn

If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to get students to actually think, these volumes have your answer. How fortunate for us that Joe Riener has distilled decades of teaching experience into these wise and eminently practical volumes.

Daniel T. Willingham

Instead of presenting us with humdrum aims, objectives, strategies, and skills, Riener takes us directly into literature—from Seamus Heaney to Atul Gawande to Mary Shelley. The point is not to prescribe a model but to invite us to read and think. A refreshing and inspiring read.

Diana Senechal