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
