{"product_id":"9780820328478","title":"Themes for English B: A Professor's Education In and Out of Class","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThemes for English B\u003c\/i\u003e a teacher ponders the nature of meaningful learning, both in and beyond the classroom. J. D. Scrimgeour contrasts his Ivy League education to the experiences of his students at a small public college in a faded, gritty New England city. What little Scrimgeour knows of the burdens his students bring to class—family crises, dead-end jobs, overdue bills—leaves him humbled. Fighting disenchantment with the ideals of higher education, Scrimgeour writes, \"How much I owe these students, how much I have learned. They know the score; they know they are losing by a lot before the game even begins, and they shrug, as if to say, 'What am I supposed to do, cry?'\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eScrimgeour's obligations to his students and his hopes for them glance off each other and sometimes collide with the realities of the classroom: the unread assignments and the empty desks. Is there too great a student-teacher divide? Can Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, or any other writer Scrimgeour teaches have something to say to a single mother with a full course load, two jobs, a sick kid, and a broken car? Yes, it turns out, and it is magic when it happens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe pupil inside the teacher emerges when Scrimgeour finds unexpected occasions for his own ongoing education. Pickup basketball games at a local park become exercises in improvisation, in finding new strengths to compensate for age and injury. His collaboration on a word-and-movement performance piece with a colleague, a dancer mourning the death of a beloved niece, leads him into unfamiliar creative terrain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA routine catch on a baseball field long ago, a challenged student in a grade school writing workshop, a yellowed statue of education pioneer Horace Mann: each memory, each encounter, forces revisions to a life's lesson plan. Scrimgeour's achingly honest, intimate essays offer clear-eyed yet compassionate accounts of the trials of learning.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Georgia Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47026640027888,"sku":"9780820328478","price":28.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780820328478_p0.jpg?v=1763749423","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780820328478","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}