All parents are teachers...

Yes, all parents are teachers, and as such, it is interesting to read books by the best teachers of our time, describing how they reach and teach children. In his bookTeach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 Rafe Esquith continues the story of his inspired work with impoverished students in Los Angeles that he began in There Are No Shortcuts. Esquith is intense, devoted to his students, a true workaholic, and comes across as more than a little nutty. He spends almost every waking hour working with his 5th and 6th grade students, and achieves dramatic results. His book is both inspiring and disturbing to me.
There are a number of good ideas in the book, such as the best way I've ever seen to prepare kids for standardized testing. He is also to be commended for his accurate belief that all students can learn, and can usually learn a lot more than people expect of them.
On the other hand, he achieves his results by adding several hours to each school day and working with his students on weekends and in the summers. Now I understand the negativity about teachers who do as little as possible during the school day, stay at school as little as allowed by contract, and take no work home; however, his schedule is not realistic for many people. I must assume his wife takes care of things on the home front, which frees him up to do all the extras. His schedule is just not realistic for many teachers. Once I worked at a school where a teacher was repeatedly praised for staying until midnight on many evenings to make costumes for a school play. It was wonderful that she did so, but she lived alone and had no necessity to be home. If one must put in those kinds of hours to be rewarded, it is very discouraging for teachers with families or other responsibilities.
Nevertheless, his books contain good ideas for parents and teachers. Another such author is Ron Clark, whose book The Essential 55: An Award-winning Educator's Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child gives the 55 expectations he has for his students, 55 rules every parent and teacher should consider.