Teach Me How to Work and Keep Me Kind - by Joseph F Riener (Paperback)

About the Book

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, ...

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.