Carol Jago is a distinguished English teacher, author, editor, speaker, and is currently serving as president-elect for the National Council of Teachers of English.
Carol was born outside of Chicago to John J. Crosetto and Mary Giacchino, both of Italian descent albeit John from Turin and Mary from Sicily. Carol was educated at St. Louis University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, (B.A., English, 1973) and the University of Southern California (M.A., Education, 1974). Since graduating, she worked in the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District from 1974 to 2006, serving as a mentor teacher and for two terms as Chair of the English department at Santa Monica High School.
Outside the classroom she continues as Director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA (since 1991), as editor of award-winning California English (since 1996) and has served on several committees and commissions for the National Council of Teachers of English. She is currently president-elect of the Association and will serve as president in 2009-10.
Carol is an author on the Holt, Rinehart & Winston Elements of Literature 2009 program [1], grades 6-12, and has been their Senior Program Consultant on the California Holt Literature and Language Arts and the Holt Elements of Language series. In this capacity she works to ensure that the textbooks teachers place in students' hands are standards-aligned, accessible, and rich. She has collaborated closely with editors of the Holt writing component to craft assignments that reflect best practice.
Her writing has been published in several newspapers and periodicals, notably The Los Angeles Times and The Outlook, where she was an education columnist and op-ed page contributor. In professional journals she contributed as a columnist to Voices in the Middle, an NCTE journal, from 2003 to 2006. Additionally, she has contributed to The San Francisco Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Christian Science Monitor, Phi Delta Kappan, Teacher magazine, American Educator, Education Week, and English Journal.
As the author of nine books on education, she continues to share her experiences in the classroom with teachers across the country.
Her wide and varied experience in standards assessment and secondary education in general has made her a sought-after speaker with Heinemann Speakers. Carol has been actively engaged in continuing education, making presentations at conferences and to groups of English teachers across the country. Her portfolio includes presentations on issues of critical importance: teaching writing, developing academic literacy, vocabulary instruction, secondary reading skills, and working with English language learners. Other presentations include the World Congress on Reading, numerous NCTE, CATE, and California Reading Association conferences.
Since 1996 Carol has edited California English, the journal of the California Teachers of English. During that period, the journal, published five times each year, has been on the cutting edge of discussion of the teaching of English, devoting each issue to wide-ranging discussion of a topical subject of interest to educators. Contributors come from high schools, middle schools, and from educators and scholars at universities across the United States and overseas.
California English was the NCTE Affiliate Journal Award winner in 2006.
Carol Jago often works with schools and districts to craft professional development programs that both meets local needs and is standards-aligned. She has helped design school-wide, cross-curricular writing programs as well as benchmark expectations and assessments for reading and writing.
Carol serves on content advisory committees for the California Standardized Testing and Reporting program as well as the California High School Exit Exam. She was a member of the California Framework committee and helped to compile the California Recommended Reading List.
Carol is a member of the NAEP 2009 Reading Framework planning committee and the NAEP 2011 Writing Framework planning committee.
An avid reader, she is known to her colleagues as an inexhaustible fund of reading suggestions and she shares her recommendations as a reader with visitors to her web site. You can find Carol's current suggestions at her book recommendation site
She has received several awards from local, state, and national associations. Most recently, she was awarded the National Council of Teachers of English “Teacher of Excellence Award” in 2006.
