I hope everybody is getting some use out of our latest newsletter, Nonfiction Notes from the Horn Book. I’ve been thinking about NF a lot since ALA, where I spent two solid days talking to publishers about what they were planning for the coming year(s). Along with inflicting upon the world way too many books about bullying, they are more justifiably concerned with how to respond to the new Common Core State Standards. Should they be publishing more nonfiction? More teacher guides? How can they convince the lazier and/or busier and/or confused schools that the “exemplary texts” appended to the standards are, just as they say, examples, not required reading?

The thing is that aside from making sure they are publishing a healthy amount of nonfiction (because the CCSS require a lot of nonfiction reading), publishers aren’t really the target here. Teachers (and the librarians who support them) are. If you read the CCSS, you will see that its directives aren’t so much about what kids should read but how they should read. Even when I read the CCSS’s “Publishers’ Criteria” [PDF], I see an awful lot of verbose waffling (“texts” [ed. note: GROSS] should be short except when they’re long; texts should be difficult except when they’re not) without any real guidance.

The CCSS themselves offer exciting opportunities, no question. I would really enjoy, for example, asking kids to “compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or topic; describe the differences in focus and the information provided” But that’s a job for the classroom and the library, not a publishing house. Unless, and again GROSS, you decide the world really needs a new series called FirstHand/SecondHand that saves time for the teacher at the expense of the library’s budget. Shoot me now.

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But to be fair to teachers, they and I are wondering just how the success of the CCSS is going to be evaluated. How is standardized testing going to measure the results of what is supposed to be unstandardized teaching? If I thought I was going to have my effectiveness measured “the old way,” I wouldn’t want to try anything new either.

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As a kid, I prided myself on being a good student. However, it wasn’t until my sophomore year in high school that I realized I wasn’t really being challenged in my classes, which were generally pretty basic. That year, I found myself in an advanced English course with a teacher who was a real stickler for quality. Until then, I’d skated easily through my English courses, and, not surprisingly, I never learned how to write with much skill. I didn’t know how I ended up in this advanced course: perhaps my counselor felt I had potential based on my older sister’s performance the previous year, or maybe I impressed my basic English teacher. Whatever the reason, I found myself confronted with an English teacher who would change my life.

The first assignment Ms. Visconti gave the class was to write an essay about something we’d read. No problem, I thought. I wrote my essay, and felt quite confident upon turning it in. The next day our essays were returned to us, and, sneaking peeks at grades written on the papers of my peers, I eagerly anticipated mine. To my chagrin, my paper was casually placed on my desk with only the words Not an essay written at the top. What?!? I was profoundly offended and embarrassed. I could have blown it off, or continued writing non-essays for the rest of the semester. But I enjoyed making good grades, and I certainly wanted one for this class. So I asked Ms. Visconti if she’d teach me how to write an essay, which she very kindly did. She thus prepared me for my college courses and, much later, my authorial debut, We Are the Ship.

Thank God for good teachers.

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