Book Review - The Essential 55

The full title of this book is The Essential 55: An Award-Winning Educator's Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child. Author Ron Clark won the 2001 Disney Teacher of the Year Award. As I'm not a Disney fan here, this was really more of a negative for me.

My dear cousin Adriene first recommended this book a year or two ago. I liked it then; it stuck out in my mind enough to check out again.

The "Rules" range from practical life skills ("When you answer the phone at your house, you must do so in an appropriate manner." "Make eye contact. When someone is speaking, keep your eyes on him or her at all times. If someone makes a comment, turn an face that person.") to specifically school related ("Homework will be turned in each day for each subject by every student with no exceptions." "If you have a question about your homework, you may call me."). Each rule is explained further, usually with a background, and the effect the rule has had on his students.

The amazon reviews often scorned Mr. Clark for some of his commentary, but I found that irrelevant to the rules. It seemed more of an attempt to spice up his writing, to add more words to the book. Obviously, I don't agree with everything he says, but overall, I found the rules to give good direction.

I didn't read through the entire book this time. I checked it out only to see if it was something that I could use as a "curriculum" with my kids. I plan to buy my own copy, and we can work through these, one rule per week. Some of them will go over better than others; but those difficult ones are probably the ones that NEED to be worked on.

Yes, I would recommend this book.