Advice from a Dedicated High School Teacher

Whether you’re a valued subscriber or a casual visitor to our blog, we certainly appreciate your continued support and feedback. It helps us a great deal in deciding upon future content. We receive a fair number of comments via the feedback link at the end of each of our blog articles, and we look forward to each comment as they’re both interesting and informative.

You can read any and all of these comments by simply clicking on the link at the end of each article. However, we recently received a request from a high school teacher who apparently reads our blog regularly and now shares it with her students. She requested that we print her comment as part of a column in hopes of reaching a larger audience than she would if we posted her advice under comments.

She wanted to offer advice to other teachers and anyone who has an opportunity to work with students. We thank her for her kinds words of advice and share them with you below.

I’d like to share some advice with a certain segment of your readers but I’m not confident that the comment area of your blog is the place to do that in order to attain the greatest exposure. If you could possibly pass this message on in one of your columns, I feel a great many people would benefit.

I teach a business class for juniors and seniors in hopes of exposing them to the realities awaiting them after graduation. This class is only two years old and was established with the assistance of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. We have made great progress in that short time and the students really seem to enjoy the process.

A parent of one of our students contacted me with a suggestion that I check out your web site and blog. He felt that both contained a great deal of information that would assist us in reaching our goals while, at the same time, would entertain and educate our students. I, and two other teachers, searched your blog and web site thoroughly and quickly agreed that we wanted our students to do the same. We did not direct them to any particular segment as we wanted them to explore and discover what was important to them. We requested that they search, find something of interest, and report to their classmates what they found.

They came back with information from almost every segment of your blog and a number of areas of your web site. They found the following to be not only very helpful to them but enjoyable as well.

Your many, many book reviews (180)
Generational Gems for Future Leaders. (great stories)
Meet the Authors
Out-of-the-Box Thinking (exciting)
Little Known Facts About Leaders and Organizations (very informative)
A Site for Sore Eyes (great resources)
Fact-A-Day (fun and educational)
Need A Lift? (encouraging)
When the Going Gets Tough (motivational)

Many other areas were mentioned as well but the above seemed to get the most attention. The message I wanted to share with others in your readership numbers, who work with students in any way, is this: Your approach to writing captures their attention and explains very crucial issues in a way which is easily understood and truly enjoyed by students of high school age. If you’re working with students in a classroom situation, an organization, a project or any organized vehicle of learning, I would highly recommend that you expose your wards to this blog and web site as it will quickly become a favored resource. I might also point out that we have many staff members and parents visiting these sites on a regular basis and have reprinted many of your blog articles in our school paper. Do yourself a favor and visit both the web site and blog and make the discovery for yourself.

Thank you for letting me share and please continue doing what you do so well.

Ms. Julie Darbon

And thank you Ms. Darbon for your kind words and obvious support. It’s rewarding indeed to know your students are enjoying and learning from our efforts. I look forward to hearing from some of them in the future. Thanks too for exposing them to the realities of a challenging world they’ll soon be part of. You’re providing them a great service and I’m sure they’ll appreciate it greatly in the future.

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services.