Employers in the 21st century want employees who can think on their feet, communicate well with colleagues and clients, and collaborate effectively with fellow workers on a daily basis. Teachers who put students first, while remaining positive and supportive in the process, can create a dynamic classroom climate in which students of any age can flourish and grow intellectually. Marcia Tate, in a review of The Power of We, said, “In his engaging, inimitable writing style, Ron takes teachers on his personal transformational journey from the traditional era of straight rows and lecture to the more effective practices of collaborative learning couple with movement and laughter. It should be required reading for every practitioner!”

Classrooms should be inviting and safe places where students can strive to achieve worthwhile goals, even as they learn that the road to improvement is not always paved; this deceptively simple guiding principle is what Ron Nash has spent five decades in education pursuing and refining. This book is intended to help teachers at any level establish an environment of safety instead of fear, encourage risk-taking and resilience, set high expectations and achieve high engagement, and let go of control and compliance, even as your students flourish.

Ron Nash has conducted hundreds of workshops around the United States in the past 16 years. He models interactive strategies like Standing Pair Share and Give One, Get One. This book is intended to give teachers, along with administrators who are working with teachers in workshop mode, the directions for a dozen strategies that will get students up, moving, sharing, and thinking on their feet. Talking is thinking, and this book provides tools teachers can use to increase the amount of interaction in K-12 classrooms.