Ron Clark was named Disney’s American Teacher of the Year in the year 2000. He is a New York Times bestselling author whose book, The Essential 55, has sold over 1 million copies and has been published in 25 different countries. He has been featured on The Today Show, CNN, and Oprah, and Ms. Winfrey even named him as her first “Phenomenal Man.” His experiences in New York City are the subject of the film, The Ron Clark Story, starring Matthew Perry, better known as Chandler from Friends.
With the money from his book and the movie rights, Ron bought a dilapidated building in the factory section of Atlanta, refurbed it, and created the Ron Clark Academy, to which more than 10,000 educators from around the world have visited to see if they could somehow bottle the magic that Ron, the staff of RCA, and the teachers and kids of RCA have been able to achieve.
Some of the magic includes having a two-story slide serve as the centerpiece of the school, so that everyone who enters has to be slide certified; getting up on the desks to teach; creating songs/raps/dances that celebrate wins/advancements/
More importantly, many of the students have a lot of poverty and hardship in their lives; but Ron Clark and his staff manage to get most of the kids on the right path and to persevere, persevere, and succeed.
More importantly, many of the students have a lot of poverty and hardship in their lives; but Ron Clark and his staff manage to get most of the kids on the right path and to persevere, persevere, and succeed.
His first book, The Essential 55, was about the expectations that he has for his students. The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck features 101 tips, tricks, and solutions for educators and parents to keep their kids/students involved, engaged, and ahead of the game.
The End of Molasses Classes is wonderful, and the tips are great, too. I have to say about halfway through the book that I started to feel inadequate as a parent. Because I love my kid, and I feel like I do a lot with him, and we do a lot of stuff together, and I even was already following a few of these ideas, but there’s always room for improvement, and if I asked myself “Am I doing EVERYTHING I can possibly do to ensure my son is successful in school?” I’d have to answer a big NO. Am I doing ENOUGH? I think so, but only time will really tell. (not trying to defend mediocrity here, but I feel like if you did everything it would be overkill. I don’t want to be a tiger dad. (Which is perhaps why Ron Clark students get featured on Oprah and at the White House, and at tons of other places)
There are too many takeaways from The End of Molasses Classes to just list a couple, but I’m going to do it anyway. (But I highly recommend reading this book and taking the advice that’s right for you.)
Here are four of MANY great points.
• Not every child deserves a cookie. Rewards are earned. If you hand them out to everybody, then they feel like entitlements, and they are de-valued. Ron bakes cookies for his students, and gives them out to the students he feels deserves them. If you didn’t get a cookie, you have the opportunity to work harder and get a cookie next week. You aren’t automatically given a cookie.
• Get On the Desk! Ron jumps up on desks as a matter of course as part of his teaching. The students love the drama, the willingness to risk, and the energy that it shows. He even occasionally allows students making presentations to do the same (although he has a number of disclaimers about it, including the fact that in every other way the school is very strict, so even when students go crazy like that there is decorum, respect, and restraint. And even more importantly, they have VERY STURDY DESKS.
• Begin Each Class On Fire Before a class begins, Ron will jump up on a desk and begin teaching to the empty classroom. As students come in, they see him teaching dramatically, and are all like “Mr. Clark, what are you doing?” To which he replies, “You were late, I started without you.” So now kids are rushing to get to his class on time because they are afraid they’ll miss something. And he avoids the whole “Settling in” phenom which wastes 5 minutes a day, everyday. And the kids know that he is trying to make the most out of every moment he has with them.
•Teach your kids to study. It doesn’t come naturally. Many parents don’t know how to study, so Ron spends a day teaching everybody how to study. Studing one page at a time, rewriting the information on a page, using flash cards to flesh out time-lines, color-coding objects to make them more memorable.Each of these tips (and all the other ones) are punctuated with real-life stories from Ron’s days as a teacher, as well as stories from his students. The writing and stories in The End of Molasses Classes are well told and you will zoom through this book.
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