Bill Page

Bill Page is a farm boy who graduated from a one-room country school and attended a small, rural high school. Granted a full football scholarship to Missouri University, he made the freshmen team, and also made 24 credit hours of F's. Transferring to a smaller college, he played starting team and took courses "that were easier" including free hand drawing, typing, and Health (taught by the basketball coach).

When his football eligibility expired, he was drafted into the Korean War. Years later, with maturity, military experience and the G.I. Bill, he graduated with a teaching degree. Bill found the teacher preparation to be worthless and actually detrimental to his educational goals and values.

Finding no help among his "traditionalist" colleagues, Bill sought help in anti-establishment books. He became an avid reader who found dozens of books with which to dialogue and help in his quest for humanistic, democratic, efficacious classroom relationships. Bill's extraordinary success with the kids other teachers rejected led to a fifty year career (1958-2008), Where he taught in public schools in four states, at many grade levels and under a variety of circumstances including:

An open, innovative school, a civics class of 527 ninth graders in an auditorium, self-contained class of 30 "troublemakers" for a year without ever addressing more than one student at a time, a year and a half in a psychiatric institution, teaching in a juvenile facility and in a sheltered workshop for trainable mentally retarded adolescents.

Later in his career, Bill taught 1000s of teachers in extension courses and summer programs, seminars, and workshops at universities throughout the United States and continued teaching teachers for 26 years. After his retirement, Bill Page became a writer who wrote and compiled this series of eBooks.

BILL PAGE: "JUST CALLS 'EM AS HE SEES 'EM"

Bill is Practical:

"I had a kid who wouldn't stay in his seat,

so I assigned him two seats."

Bill is Arrogant:

"I can teach more in two weeks

than some teachers can in a year"

Bill is Different:

"I don't grade tests, I don't take attendance,

I don't mark papers and I don't keep a grade book.

---the kids do that."

Bill is Incredulous:

"My kids took

140 field trips in one year"

Bill is Realistic

"The kids least lovable

--- need the most love;

the slowest kids need the most teaching"

Bill is Pragmatic:

"Don't complain about parents

-- our job is to teach the kids they send us.

Our job is to accept them and teach them."

Bill is Serious:

"My job is to teach 100% of the kids

100% of the material to 100% proficiency"

Bill is Concerned:

"If we're going to have mandatory attendance

-- you must have mandatory teaching.

Failure is never an option."

Bill is Innovative:

"The kids make their own text book

-- making one is better than using one."

Bill is Perplexing:

"There are only 2 ways to change behavior

-- and one of them doesn't work.

So many teachers use the one that doesn't work

-- I throw it in so I can throw it out"

Bill is Provocative:

"Show me a teacher who says

"I told him 100 times..."

and I'll show you who is the slow learner."

Bill is Down-to-Earth:

"No matter where we're headed

we have to begin where we are."

Bill is Simplistic:

"Motivation is having a reason

-- is there a reason for a kid to do homework

or be to class on time -- if so, why can't he know that

-- if he knew that, he would do that."

Bill is Child Centered:

"Each child is living the only life he has

-- the only life he will ever have:

the least we can do is not diminish it."

("") quotes by Bill Page

Bill Page is a teacher.

He has patrolled the halls, responded to the bells, struggled with the innovations and has had his share of lunchroom duty, playground and bus duty.

Bill retired in 2008 after 50 years (1958-2008) and has been a full-time writer since.

Throughout his career he has learned, been successful, and had the opportunity to have a wide range of experiences that he now shares with others.

In various newspaper and journal articles about Bill, he has been called " A Teacher's Teacher," and America's Favorite Classroom Teacher -- all because he writes from his own unique experiences, his own common sense ideas, his own original teaching strategies.

Bill does not present himself as an "expert."

He says his college training was worthless.

He does not have a master's degree or graduate courses, and says he "was not contaminated by all of the nonsense --- I didn't learn anything the first four years so I couldn't see going back to not learn anything for two more years."

Instead, he offers his testimonial as a classroom teacher who discovered his own educational philosophy and arrived at his own teaching concepts and own successful techniques.

For 30 years Bill has presented district wide staff development programs and seminars throughout the U.S. and Canada.

He has spoken to hundreds of thousands of teachers, and taught fourteen different courses at eighty-six universities including twenty-six consecutive summers at the University of California at Riverside, San Diego, Irvine, Santa Barbara and Davis -- all while maintaining responsibility for junior classes of "troublemakers" who were rejected by other teachers.

Bill Page was originator, program director, teacher trainer, and demonstration teacher for Project Enable, a six-year research program for the middle level at-risk students, funded by the U.S Office of Education through CEMREL, Peabody College and The Kennedy Child Study Center

He is eminently qualified with the experience, knowledge, expertise, materials, research, and success to offer fresh, effective and proven teaching strategies that assure increased achievement for all students -- including those most at risk.