Stockton English teachers will have pens out at Barnes & Noble

Stockton teachers B.H. James and Elizabeth James will be at Barnes & Noble in Modesto on Saturday afternoon as part of a book-signing tour.

Their “Method to the Madness: A Common Core Guide to Creating Critical Thinkers Through the Study of Literature” was published in March and is available in hardcover, e-book and paperback.

“The book is designed to help our fellow teachers develop rigorous curriculum that meets the needs of the Common Core standards, something that many teachers haven’t had practice doing in the scripted, test-prep-focused NCLB-era,” Bill James said, referring to the No Child Left Behind federal requirements.

The husband and wife co-authors, both English teachers at Franklin High School in Stockton, found Common Core required a new approach, but there was little available to help teachers bridge from what they had done to what they needed to do next.

“There is criticism that the Common Core standards in English focus too much on informational text and not enough on classic literature,” James said via email. “The framers of the standards didn’t intend this, and it’s a criticism that is more true of the implementation of the standards than the standards themselves.”

The book uses units centered on works of literature such as “The Great Gatsby,” “Hamlet” and “Huckleberry Finn” to meet the English reading, writing and listening-speaking standards, even those intended for informational texts.

Among the book’s reviews is one by Common Core critic Sandra Stotsky, who notes it has fallen to teachers to fulfill the promises of the new standards.

The book, Stotsky writes, “provides details for high school English teachers in any high school on the rigorous reading and literature curriculum the authors worked out for ‘credit recovery’ classes in a California magnet high school, as well as the discussion questions and essay-writing activities they used to engage their students and develop their college readiness skills.”

The event will be from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble, 3501 McHenry Ave., Modesto.

This story was originally published October 9, 2016 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Stockton English teachers will have pens out at Barnes & Noble."