Founder of NJ Charter Schools Assn. publishes first book

“My first year teaching, like many people’s first year of teaching, was staggeringly traumatic. For somebody to go to Princeton, and then get a job, and feel like they’re totally unprepared, tells you something about the field,” admitted Sarah Tantillo, author of the recently published The Literacy Cookbook. “It was a challenge. I don’t want people to suffer the way I did,” she added with a laugh.

Photo provided by Sarah Tantillo
New Jersey Charter Schools Association
founder Sarah Tantillo has published her
first book The Literacy Cookbook.

Based on many years of experience as a high school English and humanities teacher, as well as an educational consultant and founder and director of the New Jersey Charter School Resource Center and the New Jersey Charter Schools Association, Tantillo has written The Literacy Cookbook to be used as a practical guide for English and non-English teachers alike. It is published by Jossey-Bass.

“This is the book that I wish somebody had handed me when I started teaching, to help me understand how to teach kids how to read, write, speak and listen effectively. But it’s not just for first-year teachers. It’s for anybody who’s looking to improve the practice,” she said.

Tantillo attended Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin and even landed a job as an English teacher there after graduating from Princeton in 1987. Although the Belmar resident acknowledged that the state’s common core standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science and technical subjects have certainly improved since then, she said not all English school teachers, or any school teachers for that matter, follow the same teaching curriculum. Teachers must work off of what is available to them through the school, which makes effectively instructing students on how to read, write, speak and listen a very complex yet essential feat, no matter what the topic of discussion might be, whether it’s science, history or even math.

Many teachers have not been clear on what types of goals they’re supposed to be reaching, Tantillo said. The common core standards eliminate that problem, she stressed.

“I think the common core standards have tremendous potential to transform the field if people could really dive into them and devote significant attention to how these standards will inform their instruction because they are targeting really appropriate goals for children in terms of English language arts and literacy. They are organized in a very logical way, and they address every standard,” Tantillo noted.

The Literacy Cookbook, which is geared to those who teach at the K-12 level, also derives from other similar books on reading and writing instruction published within the last 10 years, which Tantillo said “simply weren’t available to me in the ’80s.” Her professional reading and graduate school training at Harvard University, as well as other career development opportunities she has encountered, have helped her to achieve a sensible and practical means for explaining the best way to train different types of learners, especially those who are struggling to grasp the different concepts.

An expert in the literacy field, Tantillo said she has tested each of the methods mentioned in the book on other school teachers. These techniques, she said, are actually proven strategies.

“I have a lot of confidence that what I’m putting out there is practical and useful for people, and that if they dig into it on Saturday, then Monday morning they can do some things differently.”

Tantillo is currently working on a follow-up book to The Literacy Cookbook, which she said really tackles the common core standards with what she calls RPMs, or rigorous, purposeful and measurable objectives.

Anyone who purchases The Literacy Cookbook will receive a free 30-day trial subscription to the accompanying website, literacycookbook.com. The website is filled with even more resources for teachers to find downloadable materials related to a range of topics.

“The website is a key part of the puzzle because I could not have put everything that’s on the website in the book. The book would be 1,012 pages long if I did that,” Tantillo said with a chuckle.

Area residents might recognize the book’s illustrations as being the work of Tantillo’s friend, Sandy Gingras, owner of the two LBI How to Live stores and author/illustrator of books under that imprint.

This article was published in The SandPaper.