If there were a code you could learn that would enable you to become a wonderful teacher - of any young person in your life - wouldn't you want to learn it? The Essential 55 collects together the amazingly effective rules that Ron Clark used to become an extraordinary - and award-winning - teacher. Through trial and error, he has distilled fifty-five ideas that have helped him transform apathetic students, in some of the most deprived and challenging circumstances, into prize-winning scholars. Covering all aspects of life - from the classroom to the world, from human interactions to cafeteria manners - Ron Clark shows that with determination, discipline and regular rewards, the children you stick by will be the children you eventually admire.