No question is too embarrassing, no topic is "off limits" in Berkeley High School teacher Nancy Rubin's "Social Living" classroom. These excerpts from her students' journals cover the most controversial issues in the news today--sex, drugs, violence, relationships, and hope--creating an uncensored look into the hearts and minds of American teenagers today. Young Adults.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Want to know what your sullen teenager is really thinking? Nancy Rubin has been teaching Social Living classes at a large, urban public high school for over 17 years. This book is based on her students' in-class journals. Sex, drugs, AIDS, racial identity, self-image--the students pull no punches, and neither does Rubin. Many of the journal entries are in letter form--to a parent, a body part, drugs, a romantic interest, a dead friend. This is an uncensored and consistently moving look at life in contemporary America from the teen perspective. And the news is not all bad.
From Publishers Weekly
For the past 17 years, Rubin has taught a course called Social Living at Berkeley High School (BHS) in downtown Berkeley, Calif. Catering to students from a wide variety of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, BHS is not your typical high school, and nowhere is that clearer than in Rubin's nine-week course aimed at opening minds and clearing away misapprehensions about sex, race, STDs, parents, addictive substances, violence and more. Rubin's goal is to get kids to react in writing to videos, speakers and leading questions. Angry, poignant, wise, funny and mean, the students' journals provide a wealth of understanding into teen reactions to tough issues and, as in the particularly amusing section "Etcetera Letters," into typically teenage concerns ("Dear Pimple On My Face...I HATE YOU. You just happen to be as big as a volcano, and you are erupting"). Most painful are the letters to parents, often absent, either emotionally or physically. If at times Rubin interjects too much about herself, the book as a whole is a worthwhile resource for parents and teachers, both to remind them of the old pains of being a teenager and to inform them of some new ones.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gritty and Real, Not for the Faint of Heart,
By Barry Martin (Cincinnati, OH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ask Me If I Care: Voices from an American High School (Paperback)
As a teen worker I found this be a useful guide into the minds of teens. It didn't surprise me as much as it confirmed or validated my experiences working with teens. Be warned, if you are not ready to hear the truth in graphic detail, then this book is not for you. But, if you have an open mind, a caring heart and a willingness to really understand teens then this book is a must!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A gift with an impact,
By Mark Balsiger (El Paso, Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ask Me If I Care: Voices from an American High School (Paperback)
With the Christmas season upon us, the search for meaningful gifts for our teens can be as frustrating as grasping for ways to communicate with and guide our children through the treacherous waters of adolescence. ASK ME IF I CARE may be the perfect solution. Written by Nancy Rubin, a Social Living teacher of 17 years, it is a riveting collection of letters written by teens about the issues facing them today. Problems that we as parents never had to deal with in our day. The short first person entries by their own peers will gain and hold the attention of even the most reluctant reader. It's one engaging short story after another, all true, all relevant, all brutally honest. Your teen cannot help but identify and learn from the very identifiable experiences of people trying to navigate through the same waters with the same emotional tools as themselves. This is the gift that can change, even save lives.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An authentic, powerful collection of adolescent voices,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ask Me If I Care: Voices from an American High School (Paperback)
I have used Ask Me If I Care for four years in my classes in teacher education and adolescent development. My students, who are finishing college and about to enter the teaching credential program or are currently completing their teaching credential, have consistently said they "cannot put the book down". Inevitably, students finish the book in days, completely absorbed in the powerful, sometimes painfully honest words of the adolescents in Nancy Rubin's book. Ask Me If I Care gives my students what they cannot get from a textbook on adolescent development; namely, the truth, the range of experiences and feelings and thoughts and opinions and needs and so much that this age group has to tell us. As a professor of secondary education, I am very grateful for this book.
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