Never Work Harder than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching

by Robyn R. Jackson

Some great teachers are born, but most are self-made. And the way to make yourself a great teacher is to learn to think and act like one.

In this updated second edition of the bestselling Never Work Harder Than Your Students, Robyn R. Jackson reaffirms that every teacher can become a master teacher. The secret is not a specific strategy or technique, nor it is endless hours of prep time. It's developing a master teacher mindset.

In her conversational and candid style, Jackson explains the mastery principles and how to start using them to guide planning, instruction, assessment, and classroom management. She answers questions, shares stories from her own practice and work with other teachers, and provides all-new, empowering advice on navigating external evaluation. There's even a self-assessment to help you identify your current levels of mastery and take control of your own practice.

Teaching is hard work, and great teaching means doing the right kind of hard the kind that pays off. Join tens of thousands of teachers around the world who have embarked on their journeys toward mastery. Discover for yourself the difference that Jackson's principles will make in your classroom and for your students.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction, School, Teachers, Leadership

Audible Audio

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I trudged through this book. It was truly a matter of soldiering on through.

I read this book as part of a group study for school. I highlighted and commented for several chapers when I discovered that the book was on loan. Now I have to buy a new copy for the district. And I don't even like the book!

I understand where the author is coming from. The problem is that I don't agree with her underlying philosophies. The title is Never Work Harder than Your Students but, on page 74 she talks about spending her summers re-writing her curriculum and planning for the upcoming year. Right there, she's already working harder than her students. I understand why she's doing it; I do it myself. But I felt cheated that she was so disingenous with her title.

I agreed with her in chapter 2 about setting objectives. It's hard to distinguish between setting objectives and setting the activities we want students to do. I admit that setting learning goals and objectives are difficult tasks for me. I would like more training on them but at this point every new training I go to about setting objectives and learning goals tells me to emphasize something different. I'm confused about it.

I guess I didn't get the clarification I was hoping for.

[Carrie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Never Work Harder Than Your Students” is just one of the seven “master teacher “principles outlined in this book by Dr. Robyn R. Jackson. The complete set of principles is:

1) Start where your students are.

2) Know where your students are going.

3) Expect to get your students to their goal.

4) Support your students along the way.

5) Use feedback to help you and your students get better.

6) Focus on quality rather than quantity.

7) Never work harder than your students.

While a self-assessment at the beginning of this book assured me I am on my way to becoming a master teacher, after reading the book I feel that I am anything but! But, that’s what I love about this book. I’ve got a long way to go as far as some of these principles are concerned, and now I know how to begin to get there. What I love, specifically, is that the author not only outlines each principle in more detail, but she also includes vignettes that illustrate what many of us were taught about teaching, describes the challenges that such thinking presents, provides research that supports the principle, gives concrete advice and examples about how to incorporate the principle into the classroom, and provides responses to common objections people have raised about each principle.


Sadly, this book did not quite live up to what I expected. I think that’s because the author was honest and said time and again that becoming a master teacher is not easy and there are no quick fixes. My brain knows that, but my heart wants to be perfect for my students NOW. I want quick fixes! I didn’t appreciate the author constantly reminding me that this is not to be. Also, while there vignettes and real world applications, this book was a very dry, slow read. I expected to devour this book and the wisdom it extolled, but it was just so… well… dry, that I really had to read it in small bits and make myself pick the book up again the next time. So, a book filled with lots of good, honest advice about how we can change ourselves to become better teachers, but not the most engaging, exciting read out there.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical stuff of a more no-nonsense, conservative bent, but even for this liberal Rousseau-style teacher a lot of the points hit home. Jackson delineates seven principles that can turn you into a master teacher (though not overnight, trust me). Yes, there were a few holes and a few contradictions in her arguments, but overall it was an impressive kid- and learning-oriented display. The real treat is when she shares transcripts from presentations (on this very material) before teachers who shook their collective heads. We've all been THERE on Professional Development Days, no? At least Jackson, stopped her presentation and said, "OK, let's talk." And talk they did (much to our entertainment and edification). This would be a good book for all teachers, not just English teachers, because it goes to the very soul of why we teach and what we intend to accomplish. Sometimes the obvious is fuzzy (damn it).

[عبدالمنعم الهوسه · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب يتحدث عن سبعة مبادئ تساعد في كون النعلم صاحب تدريس متميز.
فهي أكدت في بداية الكتاب على أن التدريس المتميز ليس خاصا بقلة محظوظة من الناس ، فمن سلك الطريف الصحيح بإمكانه الوصول.

كتاب من ترجمة دار الكتاب العربي ، الكاتبة تميزت في أسلوب رصين متين في تقديم المادة العلمية ..

الكتاب أعجبني في سرده ، تجارب وحوارات ومحاولة لذكر بعض النماذج ، ذكر لحال معلم وكيف تغير المعلم عندما تغير أسلوبه ..

تتحدث الكاتبة عن قصتها مع التعليم ، عن الجهد الذي بذلته في تقديم كل ما تعلمته لطلابها .. التعليمات الشرح وطرق التدريس ، ولكنها لم تجد النتيجة المرضية لها رغم تميز تقييمها الوظيفي بحسب مشرفيها. من هنا بدأت تطور نفسها.
زارت مدرسين مميزين ، قرأت كتب عن التعليم و التدريس ، حضرت مؤاتمرات



ومن الطريف .. ان هناك اشتراك وتقاطع بين تذمر الصادر من المعلمين .. في الشرق و الغرب :) محصور الدورات مثلاً .. أو إعادة التدريس لمجموعة من لطلاب مستواهم منخفض.

[Relyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

for at school book club

5/20/11
Confession time, I didn't finish this book. The end of the school year craziness just got too crazy. We're going to do the book club again early next year. I plan to finish this then.

7/21/13
I am catching up and cleaning up my Goodreads. That means adding dates to forgotten books. Somehow I never got back to this one. As I recall, she had great thought and ideas, but wasn't a very engaging writer. That happens a lot with teacher books, but I don't seem to be willing to push through most of the less engaging ones.

[Lynnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly didn’t find it moving. 2.5 stars

[Charmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

HIGHLIGHTS:
1. START WHERE YOUR STUDENTS ARE:
- Because I no longer use my teaching to meet my own ego needs, I was free to enjoy my students. When they faltered, I didn’t take it personally. I focused on helping them understand WHY they failed and how to correct their mistakes.
- Leadership Opportunities: Find informal leadership opportunities for students within the classroom, such as facilitating a class discussion, or being a group leader in small group projects.
- Culture Connections: Use information, illustrations, and examples from students' cultures when teaching the principles, theories, and concepts of your course or discipline.
- Study Groups: Set up student study groups as a way of helping students learn from each other and develop strong support systems within your class.

2. KNOW WHERE YOUR STUDENTS ARE GOING:
- Make the goal the floor rather than the ceiling. Differentiate up from the goal.
- The first day: start working right away.
- Explain to students how they will use what they are learning before they learn something new.
- Have students start their own progress.
- Discuss progress with students and provide them with specific feedback that will help them achieve their goals. Help students make the learning goals personal to them and take ownership over achieving these goals.
- Once students see the connection between the goal and the work, they share some of the ownership over their own learning and could be actively involved in reaching the objectives.
- Aligning your assessments to your learning goals helps you clarify your objectives.
- Examine each standard and decide the minimum evidence that students have achieved mastery of the standard.
- List the minimum amount of work students will need to complete in order to demonstrate mastery of the standard. Define what a C grade is. Add other work that represents enrichment or reinforcement activities to get an “A”.
- Build your criteria for mastery into your learning goals. Effective learning goals will articulate the learning target and will also spell out for students what mastery looks like.
- Our goals need to be concrete and clear to students.
- Unpacking the standards and using them to develop learning goals will help focus your instructional planning.
- Master teachers spend more time unpacking standards and objectives than they do planning learning activities.
- Distinguish between learning goals and the activities we planned.
- Help students understand why they are completing those activities and how they will know if they learned them.

3. EXPECT TO GET YOURSELF TO STUDENTS THERE:
- If you only adjust your behavior without first changing your perspective, your true expectations will leak through.
- If you truly believe that students will not meet your objectives, then that belief will play out in your interactions with students.
- Master teachers start by examining their expectations of themselves and shift their focus from what the students can do to what they can do.
- If you want to raise your expectations of your students, you first have to raise your expectations of yourself.
- Reflection is one of the greatest contributors to our ability to positively alter our own thinking and behavior.
- Pay attention to what you have identified as your core values and see if those core values actually play out in your interactions with students.
- Rather than another to-do list, create a stop-doing list of what you’re doing that is not getting the results you desire.
- Develop a plan for students who don’t get it the first time.
- Structure courses so that students cannot choose to fail. If students do not completely work, give them an incomplete rather than a failing grade and insist that they complete their work.

4. SUPPORT YOUR STUDENTS:
- An intervention plan needs to be in place BEFORE students begin to fail.
- Students are required to engage in the intervention and their role is clearly outlined for them.
- By putting a plan in place EARLY, you make it less likely that students will fail later.
- We want students to grapple with difficult material because doing so will increase and deep in their learning.
- When helping students learn a process, point out the pitfalls and mistakes that are common to the process and show students how to avoid them.
- Pre-assessment: true-false quizzes to check for misunderstanding.
- Show students how to take notes effectively.
- Break complex tasks down into manageable chunks and a logical sequence.
- Vary practice activities so that students can learn to apply what they are learning to unfamiliar and new situations.
- As soon as they become more proficient, gradually remove supports.

5. USE EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK:
- Using my assignments, assessments, or my comments to students in a way that meaningfully altered my instructional practice.
- Assessment provides valuable feedback and lets us and our students know whether we have met our learning goals.
- Assessment results can become a part of the learning process itself.
- Set up a red flag mechanism.
- Feedback designed to coach them towards better performance.
- Show students HOW to use their failure as feedback and give them opportunities to reassess.
- Use a range of assessments.
- Create early warning devices
- Decide what will count as acceptable performance.
- Simply having the information about their grades helps my students take more ownership of their success in the classroom.
- PEER FEEDBACK: Give students opportunities to provide peer feedback to each other.
- Have students create action plans for how they will achieve the objectives for your next unit.
- When you help students understand what their grades truly indicate, you give them accurate information that will indicate what steps they still need to take to achieve mastery.
- Help them improve their performance.
- PRACTICE: Give some assignments just for practice and do not grade them.
- CRITERIA: Give students clear criteria for success and models of successful performance.
- Students need opportunities to act on the feedback you give them.
- Make the feedback specific.
- Focus your feedback on the essential elements of the assignment.
- Color-coded grading.
- Coaching feedback to students information they can use to improve their performance in the future.
- How to move from where they are to mastery.
- Give students a pretest prior to teaching the unit.
- Spent time helping students analyze their performance and set goals for the next phase of learning.
- HOW TO FAIL: Learning how to fail is one of the most valuable skills we can teach students if students learn how to fail effectively, they are more likely to succeed later on.
- Give direction on how to work hard at the right things so that they will not fail in the future.
- Give them the opportunity to retake an assessment.
- Students can call their own feedback and even provide feedback to you about their performance
- If we require them to take corrective action for the parts of the material the assessment tells us they haven’t mastered, require them to master that material, and then have them come in and retake the test to ensure that they have mastered the material.
- Giving students the opportunity to try again when they didn’t learn it the first time helps students learn how to use feedback in a way that will lead to more effective effort in the future.
- Let students know that the only grades you will be giving are a, B, and “not yet “
- Require students to engage in some sort of corrective action before they retake the test. Students need to provide evidence that they have to use the feedback from the first assessment.

6. FOCUS ON QUALITY:
- Master teachers invest their time upfront.
- Spend more time designing QUALITY assignments and assessments than they do create volumes of work for their students and themselves. Rigor has nothing to do with the volume of work. It had to do with the quality of the work students receive.
- Homework should be for PRACTICE, not for acquiring new information. Only assign homework if it is meaningful.
- If you cannot connect homework to your learning goals, then you should not assign it.
- Homework you assign needs to have a clear purpose.
- A more economical way of helping students make up for missing knowledge and skills is to pinpoint only those enabling knowledge and skills that are absolutely necessary for students to be successful in your subject area and focus on helping students acquire these.
- You can build bridges over students learning gaps by helping students acquire enabling knowledge. Instead of trying to fill in all the students learning gaps, fill in those that are MOST important and build bridges over other ones.
- Distributed practice means that you divide a learning experience into smaller parts so that students can learn one part at a time.

7. NEVER WORK HARDER THAB YOUR STUDENTS:
- Get clarity on what is YOUR work and what is THEIR work. Make sure that you do your work and they do theirs.
- “Helping students” means providing them with the minimum amount of assistance they need to learn to do something on their own.
- My work: be well prepared. Clear instructions. Clear communication. Behavior expectations. Establishing structure. Assessing student progress.
- Provide them with just enough guidance so that they can solve problems on their own. Your job is to teach students HOW to manage their own behavior. Your job is to help students do well in class in spite of their constraints outside of the class. STOP intervening too soon. Be silent and give students space and time to think.
- Let students engage in discovery for themselves and provide them only with the information they need to facilitate their discovery.
- by helping students stay organized, the teachers were able to hold students accountable for their homework and long-term assignments.
- If you structure the environment so that students can more easily do their work, you will go a long way towards helping soon as assume more responsibility for their behavior and their learning.
TRY: reciprocal teaching. Checklists. Must dues for each unit define potential pitfalls? Establish logical consequences.
- Look for logical consequences that put the responsibility firmly back on students to solve their own problems.
- The goal is to have the students fulfill the responsibility and complete the work.
- Give students a choice of changing their behavior or experiencing a logical consequence.

8. PUTTING IT ALL UP TOGETHER:
- Moving towards mastery is an organic and Kemosabe process. Sustained momentum rather than lurching back and forth between reform efforts and quick fixes is the only thing that will produce the breakthrough you’re looking for. You cannot expect a lasting change if you skip the work that makes it possible.
- Focus on moving to the next step. Mastery only comes through the disciplined and consistent practice of the mastery principles.
- Stop wasting time on anything that does not fit with these principles so that you have more time to do the things that actually make a difference.
- Stop doing all the things that are not working and focus on our efforts on practicing the simple principles. The work would be much simpler, fruitful and rewarding.

[Cloud · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite the book having very sound advice, especially for new teachers, it's insulting to the readers for there to be inconsistencies and contradictions that are pushed aside simply because they are labeled under different principles. Not to mention the grossly inappropriately named "Never work harder than your students" principle which should be renamed to "Never take on the work your students should be doing".

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite teacher book I’ve read so far. It helped me completely plan my next unit in a much more strategic way for students. I wish I could have read this earlier on, but I’ve taught for 10 and a half years now and this is still a great help!

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I teach college students, this book was relevant for me and had lots of great tips and ideas. The author teaches high school students, so a lot of the ideas she gives as good for college classrooms. I'm excited to start using some of her ideas this semester.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was drawn to the title, because I often say I shouldn't be the one working hard in class, 'cause I've already learned this...the hard work of learning is STUDENTS' jobs.

That said, Jackson goes much deeper...she distills master teachers practices down to 7 principles...I like that idea, since we can organize everything we do around those principles and values: Start where your students are; know where they're going; expect to get your students there; support students; use effective feedback; focus on quality, not quantity; and never work harder than your students.

Along the way she tells stories to illustrate her points, she backs it up with research, and she makes it all feel very practical. The resources, starting with the 'quiz' and ending with reflection guides, problem solving tools, tips for book study, make the book even more valuable for teachers.

Lots to think about here...this will be one I return to.

[P Bright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many chapters in this book felt labored and confusing. Sometimes the author's voice was simply too smug and the teachers she worked with were sometimes portrayed as simpletons. However, a few chapters were quite good. The one about evaluations I found particularly good. A colleague emerged from her recent evaluation post-interview crying. I wish she could have had someone go through this chapter with her before the observation because I know last year was also a very negative experience. She is now leaving the profession. :(

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great ideas about how to think smarter about teaching, and it even includes some concrete ideas for implementing these principles. Since I'm a new teacher who's just glad to have survived her first year, the book was overwhelming because there is SO much I need to improve on. After another year or two, I'll be able to think about this book a little more systematically.

[Kaleigh Gibbons · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. I liked her 7 principles and the way she anticipated objections ("Yes, but...") within the chapters. There are definitely things I will take away from this book! However, the title is a bit of a misnomer. You'll most definitely be working harder than your students, but it will all be upfront. It's really "Never Work Harder Than Your Students During Classtime".

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of a group read for my school. It was fine; she had a few nice ideas, but she didn't really go into too much detail. At times I felt like she was "talking down" to her reader and her style was lacking. I'll take away a couple of ideas from this book, but I don't think I'll be using much from her.

[Tara Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s not a good title and not reflective of what’s in the book. As a veteran teacher I thought it was a straightforward and succinct overview of good teaching practices. I would recommend this to those new to the field and tell them to ignore the title because good teaching is a ton of work.

[Doni · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thing that really drew me in was the self-assessment. It felt very accurate. Despite there still being many controversies in the field of the education, this book felt like a credible source of what best practices are.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I'd skipped the Marzano book and read this one first. Logical, bite-sized steps to improve how I do what I do, and good tools to get it done.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well written book that kept the reader engaged with the information provided. The author makes it clear that learning to be a master teacher is a process and takes work and time. It does not happen overnight no matter what pressures that you are under to achieve that status.

The seven principles are a great starting point:

1. Start where your students are.
2. Know where your students are going.
3. Expect to get your students to their goal.
4. Support your students along the way.
5. Use feedback to help you and your students get better.*
6. Focus on quality rather than quantity.
7. Never work harder than your students.

The first thing we must learn as educators is to get out of our own way when it comes to teaching students. We do not need to do all the talking or provide all the answers. As an ice breaker rather than asking students to tell each other who they are, where they are from and what their goals are let’s try having them ask each other:

1. What their responsibilities are as a student?
2. What their teacher’s responsibilities are?
3. What is their responsibilities to their classroom community?
4. What is their classroom community’s responsibilities to them?

From there we can develop a contract to go also with the course syllabus.

This book holds many great suggestions on how to organize a classroom to encourage student learning and engagement. Although written for the K-12 classroom it could also be used at the college level.

I believe what one of my educational teachers taught me when I was getting my bachelor's degree. We all have tool boxes that we use to help our students master the learning objectives. The more tools we have in the tool box the better prepared we are to help students to achieve their educational goals. Just remember that no matter how cool a tool is their will be only so many students that tool works on so the more tools we have the better chance we have at helping all our students to achieve their goals.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The big thing I think anyone picking up this book needs to know going in is that it is about principles, not strategies. The big questions the book asks are "what are the principles you believe in about education?" and "are your practices as a teacher actually aligning with these principles?" For the most part, the book is not presenting many new ideas. There's a lot of stuff you've probably heard before like "believe that all of your students can succeed" "value the culture and interests of your students"or "use frequent formative assessments throughout the unit". Your milage may very as far as how many of her ideas are new to you specifically as a teacher, but I will say she does a good job explaining her rationale for them. Where I think the book is useful is how it asks the reader to deconstruct what they do in their class and evaluate how their practices align with their guiding beliefs about teaching. For example, we all say we have high expectations for all of our students, but is it high expectations or just high standards we expect only a few students to reach? If that's the case, what do you have to do differently? I know there are going to be teachers who are frustrated with some of Jackson's assertions (the good ol' standards-based grading/unlimited opportunities for remediation debate makes an appearance), but I will give her credit that she acknowledges most of the counter arguments in a fair, sympathetic, and thorough manner. As I said, this book is about principals rather than strategies, but Jackson also includes examples and suggestions for how her ideas can be practically implemented in school. Some are a little more realistic/efficient than others, but overall, I think they are helpful.

[Bri Blosenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very practical with “things to try” dispersed throughout the chapters.

It explores seven principles of master teachers:
1. Start where your students are (including knowing what works for you & what works for your students)
2. Know where your students are going
3. Expect to get your students there
4. Support your students
5. Use effective feedback
6. Focus on quality, not quantity
7. Never work harder than your students (meaning knowing what is truly the teacher’s work & responsibility versus what is truly the students’ work & responsibility + then holding students accountable for their responsibilities rather than taking back control)

Main takeaways:
- teachers are problem-solvers so shift your focus from what your students can/can’t do to what YOU can do!
- you should think of standards as the minimum not maximum of what students should be able to do (low level students need to get there and high level students can grow from there)
- teaching is about both what you need to start doing and what you need to stop doing to improve
- “It’s a radical statement that any teacher can become a master teacher. It’s radical because of the pervasive myth that master teachers are born, not made. In a profession that is based on the belief that any student can learn, we somehow don’t extend the same option to ourselves” … so start doing that! Growth mindset.

[Krista Mae · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be eye-opening and incredible. I have read many reviews that give the book (and author) a hard time saying that the title is misleading, but if you make it through the whole book you'll see what she's talking about!

I think there's an important distinction to be made here - the title, and one of her 7 principles, is not "Never work MORE than your students," it's "Never work HARDER than your students." As she mentions in the book, it is very easy as an educator to jump into books and professional development hoping for the next big kick or next big thing that will suddenly ignite the master teacher within you and make teaching a breeze; that is, unfortunately, not how it works!! Teaching is hard work! But if we learn to work smarter, not necessarily harder, we can be the master teachers we want to be and that our students want us to be.

Jackson's principals of great teaching are a need-to-know for all educators, and I can't wait to put some of her suggestions into practice in my own classroom!

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is a bit misleading as the book is about 7 principles that will lead any teacher to become a master teacher. The beginning of the book starts with the mindset of a master teacher and a quiz to find out where you are in the process of becoming a master teacher. I just finished my 7th year teaching and scored as a novice. At first I didn’t care much for this book because it was about the hard work I needed to do to become a master teacher and couldn’t see how that applied to the title of the book. Once I arrived at Principle 4 I finally opened to the value of what the author was teaching and found that I was excited to begin making changes in my teaching practice. I’m starting the new school year working on Principle 2 and have already listed new approaches I will take this year in my classrooom. I highly recommend this book for new and experienced teachers alike.

[Emma Krull · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a ton of logical principles, practical ideas, many examples, and includes relevant tools to improve practice. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because I teach elementary music, so (even though I hate being the, "it doesn't apply to me" person) there are just some aspects of the author's intended audience that are too different for my teaching life (teaching 900 kids, leading classes for them once every four days) to be as meaningful as they would be for others in a secondary role or general classroom role. That being said, there are many ideas here that I felt inspired to pursue; having kids be more in charge of tracking their own progress and honoring backwards design and teaching our units more productively for the assessment being two of them. Worth a read for any teacher but is definitely a must-read for general academic areas at the secondary level.

[Kristin Eoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a compelling title and a lot of good ideas and concepts, but the premise is somewhat contradictory. The author says to not work harder than your students but then gives some unrealistic suggestions, such as making differentiated assignments, tutoring on Saturdays, contacting parents with lots of notices about their children, forcing students to retake assessments, and enforcing a host of interventions. I think if you are doing all of that consistently, you are a master teacher and have more time and energy than I have.
However, Jackson does stress that progress is incremental and one shouldn't be discouraged by mistakes and setbacks, so any small steps to improve one's teaching are a good idea.

[Jeff Koslowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my third attempt at trying to read this book cover to cover and it just doesn't feel like the right way to do it. If I could do it over again, I would have taken the quiz at the beginning, then read the tools at the end, and then gone over the chapters. Going from the start makes the process feel very daunting and deflating as if to say "that's a lot of stuff I have to do to not work harder than my students." Take the quiz and go to the chapters on which you need help. Treat it like reference and not so much as a ln instruction manual.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title says it all. The focus is on developing into a master teacher, and the author promotes the idea that the key is to not do the work for the students: teachers do their duties, and students do theirs. She breaks it down into 8 principles, which include knowing your students, knowing the standards, providing support and feedback, and requiring quality work over quantity. Each chapter contained examples, the principle being addressed, and concrete steps to take. I was very excited to implement the suggestions after reading this book.

[Sarah Dunmire · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was written well enough, but they are all concepts I have heard many times before. Especially after taking a Curriculum and Administration masters level class last summer, I didn’t get too many groundbreaking ideas out of it. Some little things here and there, though. A lot of it was anecdotal, which I don’t enjoy all that much. I read it with some teachers in a school professional development book club and I enjoyed that!

[Emily Willkomm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am now a second year teacher, and I wish I read this when I was just starting out. While the author discusses the 7 principles to implement in order to become a master teacher, I found the real life examples, action steps, and suggestions really helpful. That’s is something I have been seeking for a while—actionable measures I can take to improve. The book was not only about theory, and did not leave you wondering how to apply the principles.

[Jen Madsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is a bit of a switch & bait hook for weary teachers. However, this is one of the more empowering books I've read that capture the essence of engaged learning through nurturing pedagogy. If you follow Jackson's suggestions you may work harder than your students without doing the work of your students.