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

Is great teaching a gift that only a few of us are born with, or is it a skill that can be learned? In Never Work Harder Than Your Students, Robyn Jackson makes a radical assertion: Any teacher can become a master teacher by developing a master teacher mindset. The master teacher mindset can be achieved by rigorously applying seven principles to your teaching until they become your automatic response to students in the classroom. The more you practice these seven principles, the more you begin to think like a master teacher:

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.

Using these principles, Jackson shows you how to become a master teacher no matter where you are in your practice. Each chapter provides a detailed explanation of one of the mastery principles, the steps you need to take to apply them to your own practice, and suggestions for how you can begin practicing the principle in your classroom right away. Jackson offers stories from her own teaching practice, as well as from other teachers she has helped, to show you how each principle works. Teaching is a hard job, but using Jackson’s principles will help you and your students reap the rich rewards of that hard work.