Books: The Shame of the Nation, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Articles: Serve or Fail (Eggers), Why We Built the Ivory Tower (Fish), Dehumanized (Harpers), How Public School Cripples (Gatto), My Pedagogic Creed (Dewey), Most Likely to Succeed (Gladwell), Pedagogy of the Oppressor (Stern)
Videos: George Siemens (Deschooling) and Kenneth Robinson (How Schools Destroy Creativity)
Project: San Antonio v. Rodriguez Decision
Notes: Critical Pedagogy, Gladwell, and Deschooling, John Dewey
Information about the San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez debate is available here:
For an enormous collection of sample essays you can use as a reference point for the This I Believe assignment, you can check out the NPR web site, which contains audio and text essays from the show in the 1950s and the past decade.
A few interesting ones include:
The article for discussion group this week might be of interest to the AP Language students, as it explores the way that fact based persuasion has 
given way to emotional denials:
A democracy that permits outraged denial to turn truth into a subjective concept will not remain a democracy for long. It will become an Animal Farm run by those with the biggest microphone, sharpest bayonet and maddest Mad Men. Preventing that devolution requires a true independent media—one free from corporate control and therefore free to aggressively police the truth.
Check out the article here and think about attending Wednesday night at 7:30.