Ron Clark is just amazing. I don't know how he has time to do everything he does - though he does acknowledge that if he had his own children things would definitely be different, and I don't think he is married.

Some of the things he does:

1. Make wild, extraordinary promises before he has come up with any plan or even knew he had any intention of doing that thing (e.g. putting a tube slide in the school);

2. Turns children's lives around by affirming their dreams, and going to their basketball matches many years after they have graduated;

3. Source for funding for his Academy by networking with the wealthy;

4. Jumps onto tables to teach just because he gets so excited - and because the tables are sturdy enough;

5. Organises (or asks his staff to organise) overseas trips, overnight school camps, special graduation activities and meet-and-greet activities with community partners (at which he trains students to present themselves with confidence);

6. Appears on the Oprah Winfrey show and makes the news with his kids' non-partisan musical creations during the presidential election; and

7. Makes home visits and organises bedroom makeovers with partners such as Delta Airlines.

He is such an inspiration and I totally want to teach in the Ron Clark Academy (RCA) but like I mentioned in my status update while reading this book, I would like to know how the staff deal with potential burnout and failures. Ron Clark is like a secular preacher - like all highly successful, dynamic people in their respective industries are - burning with such passion and a sense of mission that I do wonder how he manages to cope with disappointment, or whether his staff ever feel guilty about just watching the television or reading a book that has nothing to do with school.

I do love his advice though - things I strongly believe in myself but which are not highly popular or even politically correct practices, e.g.

#23 - Love what your students love, whether it's iCarly, Twilight or the NFL. I don't think we should LOVE these things but we should certainly make the effort to know what on earth students like, and not deride them for their choices. In my time, we had Take That!, Aaron Kwok and Japanese drama serials; now, it's SNSD, Bruno Mars and parkour. If we don't know how our students think or think what they think is infantile, I don't see how we can ever get through to them effectively.

#31 - Show them how to study; don't expect it to come naturally. (I found this out only recently, I am not ashamed to admit!)

#43 - Please don't interrupt a teacher's lesson to ask a question, deliver a note, etc. - I am trying to avoid doing this 100% though I have to admit I have done it a couple of times this year when certain last-minute announcements cropped up.

#44 - Avoid sitting down while students are in the room - as far as possible (within physical constraints).

#49 - Increase teacher quality instead of reducing class sizes (personally I think 35 is an ideal class size; if we can get down to 25 that would be great but looking at the sacrifices we'd have to make in teacher quality I would rather not); and

#67 - Never read a speech. I think this would go a long way in increasing the confidence of our students, but first we'd have to do it ourselves.

There are so many more things that I was so grateful to read about, things that are really hard to do but which I think are valuable to think about. I think Ron Clark presents the pinnacle of teaching achievement - the 100% excellent teacher, and if we can't fulfil his 101 ways of getting kids unstuck (even those I listed above), it would not mean we are not good teachers in our own right, but the willingness to open our minds to his suggestions is paramount.

Personally, I will continue to struggle with his advice to make ourselves completely available to parents (on our cellphones) and some of what I see as his more American-centric ideas on being a bit more rah-rah (encouraging children in cheering/chanting for each other). But if we set the bar high for our students, we should also set high expectations for ourselves, so I will think seriously about Clark's recommendations, while still hopefully managing to set aside some time to train for a marathon or two in the future...