[BHS etree] MISC: BHS teachers at Cody's 5/19

[bhs at idiom.com]

On Wednesday, May 19  Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford, both BHS teachers and
authors of the recently released "Great Books For High School Kids, A
Teacher’s Guide to Books That Can Change Teen’s Lives,"  will be at  Cody’s
on Telegraph, at 7:30  p.m.




Below is a press release from Beacon Press:



Across the country, books like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, J.D.
Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
have graced high school reading lists for years, earning their places as
classics among teachers and students alike.  But what about works like Nick
Hornby’s High Fidelity, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, or Me Talk
Pretty One Day by David Sedaris?  Can – or should – adults teach or
recommend less conventional, or even controversial, books to young people?
Would they even like them?  What, in essence, makes a book great for
teenagers?



Now, in Great Books for High School Kids: A Teachers’ Guide to Books that
Can Change Teens’ Lives, editors Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford draw from their
experiences as high school English teachers to recommend challenging,
provocative works of literature that have succeeded in the classroom and
beyond.  With nearly 400 titles in categories like “Banned Books,” “Big Fat
Books to Take On a Toad Trip,” “Sports,” “African-American,” “Gay, Queer,
Lesbian, Transgender,” etc., Ayers and Crawford offer an accessible and
engaging guide to the world of great books for parents, teachers, and teens.



In seven essays, teachers also reflect on the way their students have
reacted to, learned from, and come to love the books they encountered in
school.  Books, they show, truly can change – and save – lives.  Emily
Donaldson tells of the controversy that arose at her school when she sought
to teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a unit on racism; Sarah
Talbot writes of working to break down prejudices and preconceptions about
Native Americans while studying Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues; and Dean
Blase recounts how reading Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison enabled one
student to recognize and overcome an eating disorder.



However, as Ayers and Crawford point out, Great Books for High School Kids
is in no way meant to be an authoritative text.  “Our recommendations are
meant to be exploratory and inviting suggestions, not academic requirements,
and certainly not the definitive list that will get you into Yale,” they
write.  Likewise, the stories they share “do not ‘explain’ the book in some
final way
They are simply stories about groups of students and teachers
encountering great literature together.  Ultimately, these stories show
young people negotiating all the challenges we face in our world.”


About the Editors
Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford both teach English at Berkeley High School in
Berkeley, CA.



Great Books for High School Kids , Edited by Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford,
$15.00, Paperback

ISBN: 0-8070-3255-7
www.beacon.org



“This book presents the authentic voices of caring teachers for whom
literature and life are at the center of learning.”

—Herbert Kohl, author of 36 Children



“Were I a high school kid, I’d have been blessed with teachers like Rick
Ayers and Amy Crawford. Their choice of books – some less celebrated than
others – would have undoubtedly enriched my life. Lovely work by natural
born teachers.”

—Studs Terkel, author of Working and Hope Dies Last



______________________________
Janet Huseby and Kathryn Capps are the facilitators of the etree; please
direct any questions or concerns to them at <bhs-owner at idiom.com>

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