Teaching Smarter: An Unconventional Guide to Boosting Student Success

This refreshingly frank handbook shows teachers how to close the achievement gap in their classrooms by teaching students innovative paths to academic success. Drawing on over 20 years’ experience, Kelley presents straightforward strategies for helping learners improve their grades and test scores and experience greater school engagement—all while streamlining the teacher’s work to yield maximum efficiency. Strategies include team-grading essays, using Socratic seminars and sworn statements, allowing for re-dos, and ruthlessly pruning assignments, among others. Often humorous and irreverent in tone, this guide will be the talk of the break room. Includes online digital content.

Patrick Kelley, M.A., has his master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from California State University, San Bernardino, and a B.A. in history from Castleton State College, Vermont. A classroom teacher for over twenty years, he has experience as a mentor teacher and an AP coordinator as well as ten years with the AVID program. He is Gate certified and currently working with the International Baccalaureate Program. Patrick lives in San Bernardino, California.