Mastering High School - The Series

By now you are all certainly familiar with my latest book: Mastering the Past: Unlocking Excellence in High School History. If not, and you are either a history student or teacher and you want to move beyond mediocrity, then maybe you should become familiar with it. Anyway…to my great joy, after six weeks or so on the market the book is doing very well indeed. It’s selling briskly, and those who have reached out to me personally have offered high praise. It is currently ranked high on Amazon and has a 5-star rating. So, no New York Times bestseller list yet but I am still quite encouraged, so much so that I have decided to expand the book into a series, offering detailed and proven instruction on becoming the very best high school student. Twenty-plus years of experience in the classroom should shine a light on what works well (and what doesn’t…) so stay tuned. Next up is a book on maximizing classroom discussion, what many students find exceedingly difficult and uncomfortable. AND I’ll be focusing on teaching very soon too. Teachers of all stripes, especially the newly minted ones, will find lots of helpful ways to effectively manage your classroom and get the most out of your students.

Here’s a little snippet from the intro of my next installment:

Show of hands. Has this ever happened to you? Your teacher gave you an assignment that involved some reading, maybe some analysis, and told you that the work would be the focus of the next day’s class discussion. You did the work. You were ready. You read and understood the material, you had some thought-provoking ideas to bring up in class, and when your teacher asked for contributions, you stared at your shoes and said nothing. Of course, someone else chimed in – one of your classmates – and kicked off an engaging conversation bringing up many of the exact same great ideas that you had thought of the night before. The bell rang and you moved on to the next class totally discouraged. You had a chance to shine and you blew it. 

In my more than twenty years of teaching I have seen this happen more times than I could ever count. Bright kids who I knew grasped the material staying quiet when the opportunity arose to add to the class conversation. Time and again, kids who want to make a contribution hesitate when they get the chance. The thing is, many teachers, including myself, grade class participation (what we might call class “presence,” which goes beyond simply talking). And sadly, sometimes weak presence marks can significantly affect an otherwise earnest and diligent student’s overall grade. I have written this book as a way to combat these unfortunate moments of silence, as it were, and empower high school students with the skills and confidence needed to navigate and excel in class discussions.

And for what it’s worth, you should know that I write all of this because I have great faith in the human spirit and believe to my core that earnest students can find it within themselves to work hard and EARN their accolades…and succeed.

I’ll be posting more as I continue to put together the next in the series, tentatively titled: Mastering Classroom Discussion 

With compliments,

Keith