Dave Stuart Jr.

Teaching Simplified.

I wrote a big kid book

non-freaked-out-common-core-anchor-standards
Click the pic if you want to purchase this beast.

(Update from Dave: My book received an unsolicited review over at English Journal. Read it here.)

Two summers ago when I started Teaching the Core, it was a freebie blog on WordPress.com that literally zero people had heard of.

I wrote my tail off, submitting many of you to torture by typo and billions of pixels of true rough draft thinking.

Yet slowly but surely, the blog grew, and I swear to you that I'm not exaggerating or trying to be humble when I say that 99% of that success has been thanks to people who are not named Dave Stuart Jr.

Part came from commenters on the blog who helped me understand what to write about next; part came from folks on Twitter like Erica Beaton and Mary Clark who relentlessly shared what I was writing (and they still do today) when I was a literal and total Twitter newb; part came from the educators I work with at Cedar Springs High School; so much came from my students, who constantly forced me to bridge the gap between theory and practice; a good deal of it came from the community at Fizzle, an online learning platform for people trying to build a useful thing online and, heaven forbid, even earn an income doing it.

Credit where it's due, you know?

All that is to say that, in Fall 2013, I was approached by an acquisitions editor named Kate at Jossey-Bass Wiley, and we ended up with a book contract. I was like:

How I'll Feel If You Write a Review (1)

because writing a book has been on my bucket list before I knew bucket lists were a thing.

The most biased review of my book you'll ever read

So here's what I think the book is and isn't.

It is:

  • mercifully short
It's as thin as an ink pen is thick!
It's as thin as an ink pen is thick!
  • extremely well designed
Look at that cover design -- that's nice.
Look at that cover design — that's nice. The interior is pretty, too.
  • decidedly down to earth
Seriously, who writes that?
Seriously, who writes that?

It isn't:

4-up on 4-1-14 at 4.48 PM #5 (compiled)
Here's my review of Jim's series.
  • rife with research (there's a bit, but I wouldn't call it rife)
A sample shot of the ol' Works Cited.
A sample shot of the ol' Works Cited.
  • written by a guru (I'm just a small-town teacher man in West Michigan, people!)
This is the author.
This is the author.

And here's what it does and doesn't do.

It does:

  • treat every anchor standard
Here's a shot of one page of the Table of Contents.
Here's a shot of one page of the Table of Contents.
  • take a crack at why each anchor matters
This is probably my favorite feature of the book.
This is probably my favorite feature of the book.
  • contain a much more polished and thorough version of the material I used to sell on this blog as a $1+ ebook and that I blogged through in Summer 2012.

It does not:

  • treat grade-level standards
  • strike me as the kind of book I'd sit down in an armchair with a pipe and read through for enjoyment
  • have any cool pictures in it (well, I take that back, there is one sweet diagram)
NICE.
NICE.

And that, my friends, is all you need to know to determine if you will purchase said book.

(If you do decide to purchase it, please consider asking your administrator to foot the bill by writing a well-reasoned resource request.)