What Coffeechug thinks of the book Think Like A Pirate by Dave Burgess

Book Description

Based on Dave Burgess's popular "Outrageous Teaching" and "Teach Like a PIRATE" seminars, this book offers inspiration, practical techniques, and innovative ideas that will help you to increase student engagement, boost your creativity, and transform your life as an educator. You'll learn how to: • Tap into and dramatically increase your passion as a teacher • Develop outrageously engaging lessons that draw students in like a magnet • Establish rapport and a sense of camaraderie in your classroom • Transform your class into a life-changing experience for your students This groundbreaking inspirational manifesto contains over 30 hooks specially designed to captivate your class and 170 brainstorming questions that will skyrocket your creativity. Once you learn the Teach Like a PIRATE system, you'll never look at your role as an educator the same again.

Coffeechug Thoughts

This is not going to be so much of an review of a book, but more of how I have applied the principles to my life. This is a MUST READ. If you have not read this book then you are missing out. This book is taking off like a pirate ship at sea going 50 knots. The buzz online via the #tlap hashtag on Twitter and the countless book clubs based on this book is insane. I am planning a book club in August and I feel like I won't have much of an audience because every teacher will have read the book already.

Here is why the book works. First, he is a teacher. He is not removed from the classroom and speaks to teachers. There is no talking down and there is none of the typical ideas that sound great on paper, but fail miserably in the classrooms of 30+ students. The ideas are classroom tested and student approved.

Second, he is not stuffy. He writes normal and at a level that makes sense. It is practical. I would not say that anything is particularly earth shattering in the book(this is not a slam), but the ideas are ones that any teacher at any level could use or modify to make their own. I did not need a dictionary pulled up to define every other word while reading.

Third, I was excited to mark in my book. I am reader who hates marked books. This book I highlighted everywhere and wrote notes in the margins. Great little taglines and thoughts to reinforce what many of us already do. As I was reading his examples and stories I was able to relate to projects I have done or stories of my own as a teacher. I was able to connect and we all know how important connections are when it comes to teaching and learning.

Last, it was just the right read at the right time. The material helped to reignite some excitement to teaching. As stated before his ideas are great and wonderful, but are nothing that we couldn't all do. The keys are his three ideas of passion for teaching. He loves what he does. Passion has been my big summer topic and therefore when I read the book and could feel his passion I knew it was going to be some great stuff.

This is a must read for any teacher. One of the better education books I have read. It has motivated me to create a poster with one of his sayings which you can see here that allowed me to connect with new educators I never worked with before and added augmented reality. It has inspired me to get ready to buy a bulk of these books to hopefully have a school book club to share and discuss as well as online on Twitter. It has allowed me through #tlap to meet so many amazing educators who have a passion for what they do. The book has gone beyond just reading, but impacting my PLN and what I continue to learn beyond the reading. When that happens you know have something special and that is what Dave Burgess has been able to create. If he can do that with a book, then I can only imagine what he does with the minds of his students.

Here is his link on Twitter: https://twitter.com/burgessdave
Join and follow the hashtag #tlap
And here is his website: http://www.daveburgess.com/