Shelley and I are excited to announce the release of a brand new addition to the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. line of books! Learn Like a PIRATE: Empower Your Students to Collaborate, Lead, and Succeed by Paul Solarz, is a powerful manifesto showing exactly how and why to design and build a student-led classroom.

Paul’s work, ideas, and contributions to the educational community are too powerful to ignore. We asked him to swing open the doors of his classroom and show us EXACTLY what he does to create an absolutely amazing culture that places students firmly in control of their learning and practicing the real-life skills of collaboration and leadership.

Mission Accomplished!

This is the REAL work from a practicing classroom teacher who does this stuff everyday.

IT’S ALL HERE…from how he builds this culture from the opening days of school to how he is able to take students from diverse backgrounds, widely varying personality types, and a multitude of skill levels and meld them into a high-functioning, productive, supportive classroom family.

Project-based learning (PBL), student blogging, Mystery Skype, maker space, student TED-style videos, simulations, mini-lessons, responsibility partners, Quality Boosters…this is a 250+ page treasure chest of awesome ideas to transform your class.

The book includes close to 70 QR codes (clickable links in the Kindle version) that link to a vast array of supplemental resources, student examples, and further detailed thoughts on many of the topics. Principal Beth Houf (@BethHouf) wonderfully described it as a “ virtual pop-up book!”

If you loved Teach Like a PIRATE, this is an outstanding companion piece which more fully addresses the role of the student in a PIRATE classroom.

In the #tlap community, we talk a lot about how risk-taking and stepping out of our comfort zones are what PIRATE educators do. Well, it turns out that perhaps the most daring maneuver a pirate captain can make is to be willing to hand over the wheel and let the crew steer the ship.

Learn Like a PIRATE is available on Amazon right here.

If you buy the paperback, you can add the Kindle edition for just $2.99 and have it available on all of your devices immediately.

Thank you for your continued support and for all you do to change the lives of your students.