Description
Book SynopsisPuzzle Me the Right Answer to that One 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 writ
Trade ReviewIf 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, professor, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia; frequent contributor to American Educator; author of Raising Kids Who Read, What Parents and Teachers Can Do and Why Don’t Students Like School, A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and…
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, author of Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture; teacher, Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering, NYC
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, AP English teacher, Sacred Heart Academy, New Orleans, Louisiana
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, former student; teacher in Portland, Oregon
Joseph Riener has written a record of his many years as a passionate and talented Teacher-Scholar. The result is an extraordinary compendium: it is partly a guide to the array of literary works that Riener has taught, an array that reaches across centuries, countries and cultures. It is partly a guide to teachers on how to survive the depredations of the current U.S. educational system with my minds and hearts intact. And it at all times a testament to the enduring power of an intellectual committed to inspiring the minds of the future. -- Jeff Nunokawa, professor of English, Princeton University; author or "Note Book"
Table of ContentsCHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THIS VOLUME AND FIRST CLASSES “This” by Czeslaw Milosz, “Women and Horses” by Maxine Kumin, poems by Seamus Heaney CHAPTER 2 WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THAT? “What Are You Going to Do with That?” by Mark Danner, and “If We Fail to Act” by Paul Farmer CHAPTER 3 SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL IN ANCIENT GREECE The Bacchae by Euripides, translated by David Greig CHAPTER 4 THE STRUGGLES OF A SURVIVOR Great Expectations by Charles Dickens CHAPTER 5 HOW THEY DID POLITICS WAY BACK IN THE DAY Oedipus the King by Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles CHAPTER 6 HOW TO RESPOND TO EVIL Strength in What Remains, a Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness by Track Kidder CHAPTER 7 AMERICAN SILENCE selections from The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb by Gar Alperowitz CHAPTER 8 WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE 20TH CENTURY “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality” by Timothy Synder and “What Have We Learned, if Anything? By Tony Judt CHAPTER 9 A VIGILANCE THAT MUST NEVER FALTER The Plague by Albert Camus CHAPTER 10 GLIMPSES AT THE TRAGEDY THAT HAS LED TO A CURRENT REVOLUTION “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx, selections from Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde CHAPTER 11 SOME REMARKS ABOUT SENIOR ESSAYS CHAPTER 12 TO RUSSIA, WITH LOVE AND POETRY “First Loves” by Michael Ignatieff and selected poems of Anna Akhmatova CHAPTER 13 THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST WITH CULTURE Review of and selections from Radical Hope, Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, by Jonathan Lear CHAPTER 14 AFTERWARDS, HOW DO YOU LIVE A LIFE? Beloved by Toni Morrison CHAPTER 15 DO WE DARE? The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare CHAPTER 16 HOW CAN THIS MURDERER BE UNDERSTOOD? Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky CHAPTER 17 A PORTRAIT OF A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN AND A MADMAN, IN LONDON, IN 1923 Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf CHAPTER 18 NOW, WHO’S THE MONSTER HERE? FRANKENSTEIN, 1818 edition, by Mary Shelley CHAPTER 19 AN ENGAGED INTELLECTUAL, CAUGHT BETWEEN TWO PEOPLES selections from Once Upon a Country A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh and a review of the book by Amos Elon CHAPTER 20 THOUGHTS ON SENIORITIS AS AN ENVIRONMENTAL DISEASE AND THE GLORIES OF A HIATUS IN A YOUNG PERSON’S LIFE CHAPTER 21 AMBIGUITY AND OUR DECISIONS IN HISTORY Copenhagen, a play by Michael Frayn CHAPTER 22 OUR LANGUAGE’S FIRST STORY Beowulf a new verse translation with an introduction by Seamus Heaney CHAPTER 23 FROM A BIT OF READING, A BIG IDEA Brief selections from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Samuel Putnam, and, indirectly, “The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote” by Simon Leys CHAPTER 24 LOVE AND VIOLENCE AMONG THE YOUNG Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare CHAPTER 25 SOME POETS AND POEMS “Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth, “Easter, 1916" and “Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, “East Coker” by T.S. Eliot, poems by Wislawa Szymborska CHAPTER 26 HOW TO DEAL WITH PUSHY PARENTS CHAPTER 27 TEACHING AS BOTH A POSSIBLE AND IMPOSSIBLE JOB CHAPTER 28 DEALING WITH TERRIBLE EVENTS CHAPTER 29 CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND ITS ILLS CHAPTER 30 TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND MENTAL ILLNESS APPENDICES
