Resistant Students: Reach Me Before You Teach Me

Mary Skvorak’s book, Reach Me Before You Teach Me, rings with wisdom and authenticity. Her examples of dialogue between teacher and student reflect deep understanding of the relationships that are possible when we rest our own agendas and begin to listen to what our students need from us as people before they can learn from us as teachers. She also grounds her suggestions in solid educational theory, finding the perfect pitch between research and practice. Her work is timeless, and will be useful to the new and long-standing teacher alike.

Skvorak presents an articulate discussion to assist educators in distinguishing their own emotional responses from challenging behaviors demonstrated by resistant students. One of the most underaddressed areas of education is classroom management and working with students who demonstrate challenging behaviors, an issue that all classroom teachers will confront sometime in their career. In this book, Skvorak presents foundational concepts to assist educators in developing reflective practices to deal with resistant students and break the cycle of emotional reactions to defiance and aggression. Additionally, self-assessments presented in the book emphasize a positive/strengths approach (e.g., exploring talents and multiple intelligences) in working with resistant students as opposed to viewing students through a deficit lens. The book is well structured and presents a quality discussion with easy steps toward implemention in practice. Summing Up: Recommended.

This book is a great tool for educators. Mary Skvorak offers teachers practical ideas to shape positive behavioral outcomes by engaging students in ways that change their negative self-beliefs. It invites teachers to examine and perhaps modify their own teaching behaviors to improve the learning and behavior of the most challenging students.