Common Core Focus
Responding to a Fascinating Moment in Education
Author, editor, publisher, and speaker Marc Aronson believes passionately in the power of great nonfiction – in building background knowledge, nourishing children’s interest in the real world, and helping young people become critical readers and thinkers.
He has written history and biography books for middle school children and young adults, including books about the secrets of Stonehenge, the sugar trade (Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science), and the life of John Henry (Ain’t Nothing but a Man). His biography of Sir Walter Ralegh (Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado won the ALA’s first Robert L. Sibert Information Book Award for nonfiction and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award.
Dr. Aronson gives talks, conducts workshops, and holds webinars on the Common Core English Language Arts Standards adapted to the needs of teachers, librarians, parents, and book publishers. He believes these new standards, which have been adopted by 46 states, hold great promise to help young people become problem solvers, but they require us to think in new ways about reading, nonfiction, inquiry, and knowledge-creation.
Dr. Aronson’s regular column in School Library Journal, Consider the Source, often deals with the Common Core. He is a contributor to the multipart-series on the Common Core SLJ publishes each month, and the feature article on Common Core and Clustering that he wrote with Susan Bartle appears in the November, 2012 issue.
If you are interested in bringing Dr. Aronson to speak or conduct workshops on the Common Core, please contact Catherine Balkin at BalkinBuddies.