Dave Stuart Jr. - These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most

Dave Stuarts These 6 Things is among the most helpful, passionate, practical, and insightful teaching resources I have ever come across. It is brimming with simple, practicaland exceedingly realisticsuggestions and strategies for immediately improving the quality of schooling and student workstarting tomorrow. These 6 Things is an impressive and arrestingly written book by a working teacher. I hope it gets a wide reading.

Mike Schmoker

Author of FOCUS: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

Dave Stuart has an important insight: that a skill kids already know how to do, which is argue, also happens to be a central one in the new standards for college readiness. In Stuarts wonderful book, These 6 Things, he draws extensively on his own classroom experience to show teachers how to help students use their everyday argument skills to energize the classroom, meet these standards, and achieve success. An extra treat is that Stuart himself writes in a down to earth language refreshingly devoid of Educationese. If youre a teacher or school administrator interested in turning your students onto argument, Dave Stuart is your man!

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

Authors of They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing

What I appreciate most about Dave Stuarts book These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most is that he is one of us: a classroom teacher sharing with us what works for him in ways that will work for us in our own classrooms with our own students. When I read about the poster on his class wall that says [In this class] we are all about becoming better thinkers, readers, writers, speakers, and people, I think of the years of hard work I have watched Dave Stuart put into his craft and this book, and how the same statement applies to Dave Stuart himself: He is all about becoming a better thinker, reader, writer, speaker, personand teacher, and showing us how we can do the same.

Jim Burke

Author of Your Literacy Standards Companion

If youre searching for balance as a teacher of literacy, search no further. Dave Stuart Jr. offers a calming voice for a frenzied profession and provides practical classroom strategies that will help you teach adolescents in the rich and meaningful ways they deserve without becoming overwhelmed. This book is packed with ideas that are research-based, student-centered, and most of all, workable.

This is a book written for classroom teachers by a classroom teacher, one who understands the struggle of teachers to navigate the demands of standards and content and offers an accessible, sensible formula for classroom success. Dave is a guide, a mentor, an advocate, and a fellow traveler on the road to nurturing and educating students through positive, focused instruction.

Barry Gilmore

Co-author of Academic Moves and Common Core CPR

In These 6 Things, Dave Stuart provides a framework and road map that is of value to educators at all stages of their careers, from novices to veterans. He reminds us all to focus in on the things that are most important and to do them well. Much of the book creates opportunities for the kinds of reflection and self-analysis in which most teachers do not have the opportunity to engage. A great tool for new teachers and seasoned teachers alike to find their Everest and pursue it.

David T. Conley, PhD

Professor at University of Oregon and

Director for Center for Educational Policy Research

These 6 Things is a joyful shot in the arm for experienced teachers as well as for novices. Is it possible to consolidate the most important aspects of teaching into one bookcomplete with relevant, engaging examples that have been tried and proven by teachers in various content areas? I wouldnt have thought so, but Dave has managed to do it, all while affirming, encouraging, and acting as a guide on the side for those who may feel unsure about trying out new activities with their students. Youll want to carve out some reading time for this book. The journey will yield wonderful rewards for both teachers and students.

ReLeah Cossett Lent