Sarah Tantillo – Bio

Sarah Tantillo, Ed.D. is the creator of The Literacy Cookbook (www.literacycookbook.com) and author of The Literacy Cookbook: A Practical Guide to Effective Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening Instruction (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Literacy and the Common Core: Recipes for Action (Jossey-Bass, 2014), Using Grammar to Improve Writing: Recipes for Action (BookBaby, 2018), and Hit the Drum: An Insider’s Account of How the Charter School Idea Became a National Movement (BookBaby, 2019).
She has consulted in NJ and nationally with schools (esp. urban schools) seeking to improve student achievement since 2007.  She is currently the Managing Director of Humanities at the Great Oaks Legacy Charter Schools network in Newark. Sarah taught high school English and Humanities in both suburban and urban NJ public schools for 14 years, including seven years at the high-performing North Star Academy Charter School of Newark.  She also founded and ran the NJ Charter School Resource Center and NJ Charter Schools Association.  She has studied at Princeton (B.A. ’87), Harvard (M.Ed. ’91), Johns Hopkins (M.A. ’95), and Rutgers (Ed.D. ’01).  Her dissertation was on culture formation in charter schools.  She writes two blogs: The Literacy Cookbook (http://theliteracycookbook.wordpress.com/) and Only Good Books (http://onlygoodbooks.wordpress.com/).