With Rigor For All: Teaching The Classics To Contemporary Students By Carol Jago (Director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA) is a persuasive and engaging enthusiastic advocacy for the values and benefits of teaching classic works of literature to contemporary students. From a methodology that helps students to think about the classics and interpret the stories for themselves, to book lists of great classics for the classroom, to a cautious survey of obstacles that can interfere with learning about the classics, With Rigor For All is an excellent and recommended supplementary resource for classroom educators and curriculum developers.

Why teach pop fiction students can read on their own with the CD player blasting, the phone ringing, and the blow dryer sculpting their do? Do we need paid professionals to labor over the white knucklers of Stephen King or John Grisham? Why not make teaching more rigorous and explore the jewels of literature with students who, in all probability, wouldn't pick up Heart of Darkness on their own? Carol Jago's book, With Rigor for All, challenges teachers to raise their expectations and afford their students the opportunity to wade, then dive into text rich in plot, character, and theme. Think classic classics. Jane Eyre. Ivanhoe. Notes of a Native Son. Now think contemporary classics. A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. The Color Purple. House of the Spirits. Imagine your students bathing in metaphors, analyzing the meaning between the lines, grappling with complex relationships. This is what Jago's book is all about. Learn how to facilitate student-run discussions; how to encourage close analysis of the text; how to hold students accountable for their reading; how to expose your students to writing that will make their brain sweat during reflective journal exercises. As an English teacher and standards coach, I found the content of this book illuminating, the style engaging. Jago speaks with a convesational voice, escorting you on a journey that is a one-way ticket. After reading With Rigor For All, how can you possibly go back to pop pabulum between bells?

Jago's book made this former English teacher want to get back into the classroom. Both practical and inspiring, it is the best guide I have seen for helping teachers to re-engage the complex but oh-so-rewarding texts that we've almost given up on thinking we can teach in this video-driven and impatient age. Done right, her tough-minded but realistic advice will open up the complex riches that await the teacher and the student of enduring literature--riches we underestimate until we read how Jago, herself, has succeeded mightily in passing them on to her initially-resistant charges at Santa Monica high school. This is a book I will retun to regularly. If you are an English teacher, or a person concerned by the slow dying of the literary light, get this book and read it carefully--and buy it for an English teacher you know.

I've read several study-help books, and this one is at the top of my list. It's well written and extremely practical

The book is in two parts: surviving college with you Christian faith in tact and surviving college with your grades in tact.

The first part of the book has a lot of helpful advice, but even if you're not a Christian, the half of the book devoted to studies is so helpful it would be worth buying the book just for that. Demar gives step-by-step, detailed suggestions on everything from forming study habits to memory mechanics.

This book would be helpful for any student, whether experienced or a beginner, top or bottom of the class. It's easy to read and full of great advice.