Teachers Rick Ayers and Amy Crawford always wanted to find a guide to the vast world of great books for teenagers-one that didn't talk down or moralize. When they couldn't find one, they set out to create it.
An early prototype offered at Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley, California, was an instant success. "Great Books for High School Kids" is the culmination of their efforts.
Collecting recommendations and essays from colleagues and advisers around the country, this is a rollicking, thoughtful, against-the-grain guide that challenges stodgy notions of what great books are and what kids are ready for.
The book starts with seven essays by high school teachers about exciting, exemplary experiences they have had reading books with students in the classroom-from Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina" to Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" to Aeschylus's "Oresteia" trilogy.
Augmented by an index of more than seventy subjects, the book also has an annotated list of hundreds of Recommended Great Books. The recommendations are playful and irreverent, ambitious and entertaining, and they go way beyond traditional reading lists. From classics to the unexpected, from literary novels to nonfiction, some drama, and even a little poetry, these are all books that teenagers have read with pleasure and can read on their own.
"Great Books for High School Kids" is an invitation and a sourcebook for inspiring passionate, lifelong readers-a book that could seriously change the lives of teachers, of families, and of kids.

"Zero tolerance" began as a prohibition against guns, but it has quickly expanded into a frenzy of punishment and tougher disciplinary measures in American schools. Ironically, as this timely collection makes clear, recent research indicates that as schools adopt more zero tolerance policies they in fact become less safe, in part because the first casualties of these measures are the central, critical relationships between teacher and student and between school and community.

Zero Tolerance assembles prominent educators and intellectuals, including the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., Michelle Fine, and Patricia Williams, along with teachers, students, and community activists, to show that the vast majority of students expelled from schools under new disciplinary measures are sent home for nonviolent violations; that the rush to judge and punish disproportionately affects black and Latino children; and that the new disciplinary ethos is eroding constitutional protections of privacy, free speech, and due process. Sure to become the focus of controversy, Zero Tolerance presents a passionate, multifaceted argument against the militarization of our schools.

Inspired by the life and work of Bill Ayers - particularly his advice to "teach into the contradiction" - Diving In reflects the intellectual adventures that Ayers has always encouraged those around him to undertake. Written by leading educators and activists, the collected chapters within this book are as diverse as the myriad contradictions that teachers encounter in their day-to-day practice and their out-of-class musings. The contributors use themes suggested by Ayers's work to open up new perspectives and discourses on key issues in education, such as education as a human right, participatory democracy, social justice, and liberation. Diving In offers much-needed hope at a time when teachers need it the most.