In the wake of the destruction wrought by Sandy, Marc Aronson emphasizes the importance of the Common Core standards as students and teachers discuss the link between the recent hurricane and climate change.
Consider the Source: On the Common Core Trail
By on November 6, 2012 Leave a Comment
Here’s Marc Aronson’s latest report from Common Core land. Two weeks ago, he was on the road for four days along with Sue Bartle leading Common Core (CC) workshops. They learned a lot—much of it encouraging.
Consider the Source: Shuffling Off to Buffalo
By on October 10, 2012 Leave a Comment
School librarians and the Common Core (CC) have been my focus all year, and especially this fall. Sue Bartle and I have been holding one workshop after another with teachers and librarians, spreading our CC gospel and hearing their issues and concerns. The great thing about being out in the field is that I learn as much as I teach—and one spectacular example of that recently took place in Buffalo, NY.
Consider the Source: Convergence
By on September 26, 2012 2 Comments
Marc Aronson discusses a set of books that looks at the same moment in history from three different angles. Taken together, the three titles offer a more comprehensive picture of a time of invention and discovery than we’d typically get from an individual book: one title focuses on a remarkable genius; another on a breakthrough invention; and the third title, which explores a transforming theory, is really best seen as a moment in which circumstance, individuals, and technology converge to make change possible.
Consider the Source: The Reign in Spain
By on September 7, 2012
The issues and questions raised by Common Core are not only apparent stateside. Marc Aronson discusses how his trip to Barcelona revealed that there might be an opportunity to collaborate with the Spanish city, and other international locales, to inspire students to be innovators.
Consider the Source: The Problem with Common Core’s ‘Appendix B’
By on August 24, 2012
We always warn kids not to “pile on”—adding an extra shove when another kid is already down. But in this case, I have to add my voice to Melissa Jacobs-Israel’s. Melissa has expressed her frustration with the Common Core’s infamous Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Performance Tasks, and I couldn’t agree more.Sadly, Appendix B isn’t down.
The Known and the Uncertain: The Special Challenge of Teaching Students to Think Like a Historian or Scientist
By on August 14, 2012
One of the joys of reading the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), the British book review journal that arrives in my mailbox more or less on schedule four times a month, is that it periodically includes lengthy essays drawn from lectures or from introductions to new books that are aimed at that borderline place between the educated layperson and the browsing academic. TLS’s editors often group a selection of each week’s works by theme, and its July 6 issue included several interesting reviews related to medieval heresy. One sentence in the piece stopped me in my tracks: “he” (I’ll tell you whom in a moment) “frames what he is not sure of within the boundaries of what he is sure about.”
My Sword & Shield: Why Social Studies Matters | Consider the Source
By on July 31, 2012
What binds us together as a nation? What do we hold in common? What are the invisible linkages of law, custom, trust—the “single garment of destiny,” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called it— which we weave with the intertwining threads of our lives?
The New Nonfiction—and Why It Matters | Consider the Source
By on July 24, 2012
One of the presentations that I had a chance to participate in at the American Library Association’s annual conference, in Anaheim, in June, featured some unexpected drama. On Sunday afternoon, Dr. Joe Sutcliff Sanders, Nina Lindsey, Jonathan Hunt, and authors Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Marina Budhos, and I were considering whether there’s a “new nonfiction,” if that even matters, and what kinds of nonfiction best serve today’s young readers.
America’s Changing Face | Consider the Source
By on July 3, 2012
In the late ’60s, Bob Dylan wrote a song called “I Pity the Poor Immigrant,” which channeled our nation’s dreams and images. And indeed, if you do some free associating with the word “immigrant,” you might conjure up some black-and-white images of “huddled masses” in steerage on the way to Ellis Island, or “coffin ships” creaking slowly across the Atlantic from famine-ravaged Ireland, or even African captives forced to endure the deadly Middle Passage. Or you might think of labor leader Cesar Chavez and the travails of migrant Mexicans workers in the late-20th century, or more recently, of the spate of laws and heated rhetoric that have been directed at undocumented Hispanic immigrants.
Consider the Source: Hello Again
By on June 26, 2012
More than five years ago, I stopped writing my monthly SLJ column, “Consider the Source,” and began a blog, “Nonfiction Matters.” Since the end of May, I’ve put down my blogging gear and now I’m shifting back to my column. So, hello again to my old column readers and my recent blog readers—and welcome aboard to any new friends who’d like to join us.
Time Delay and Convergence
By on June 1, 2012
Change Partners and Dance
By on May 28, 2012
Fred Astaire sings this lyric to Ginger Rogers in the 1938 film “Carefree,” so my quick search of Youtube tells me. I’m borrowing the irving Berlin lyric to announce my own change — and ongoing dance. This will be my second to last post in Nonfiction Matters. Starting in June I’ll be writing a column [...]
“Objectivity Is Not Neutrality,” Or, the Problem of Lag Time
By on May 24, 2012
I’ve noticed a pattern often enough to now propose it as a theory: discussions that take place in the academy — in the debates among experts in papers and conferences which then form into competing “schools” of thought carried forward by graduate students — reach the world of K-12 books in about twenty years. Perhaps [...]
Big Data? Big Questions — Reading Fast and Slow, Private and Public
By on May 22, 2012
Another Meaning of the “Common” in Common Core
By on May 19, 2012
Whenever Myra, Mary Ann and I talk about CC we stress the third “c,” collaboration — meaning librarians working with teachers and administrators. But I just read a review of a new book that made me think of the idea of “commonality” in a different way. Mark Peterson’s book Galileo’s Muse is a new general [...]
YA Biography — How Does it Differ From Adult Biography?
By on May 18, 2012
CC Change and Challenge
By on May 16, 2012
By the time you get around to reading this, all of you will have noticed that David Coleman is leaving the Common Core effort to become the new head of the College Board: http://tinyurl.com/d4qfxry
The Times article is interesting in that it brings up two kinds of objections to CC: from Texas in the name of [...]
Legal Implications
By on May 14, 2012
I was standing on line waiting to appear at the Rutgers Graduation yesterday when my colleague professor Nancy Kranich began discussing a legal ruling that had just been handed down: 3 publishers against Georgia State University: http://chronicle.com/article/Long-Awaited-Ruling-in/131859/ That article explains the case and the ruling, and if you click through at the very end of [...]
The Famous “Appendix B,” Exemplars, and Short Texts
By on May 11, 2012
If, like me, you have become all too familiar with the Common Core standards, you have found your way to “Appendix B,” the list of IT (informational text) titles that are provided into sections, K-5, and 6-12. You are also certainly aware of the apparent focus on “short texts” that I have discussed here previously. [...]
