Frank recognizes that teachers are overwhelmed in meeting demands from authorities and facing pressures from critics and parents in our polarized climate. In preparing his second edition for Teaching That Matters: Engaging Minds, Improving Schools, which had a small but warm reception, he has renamed it Conversation Classrooms: A Profound Shift from Delivery to Partnership. Teachers will be invited to dip into the book in any way they choose.

Teachers and students in conversation make for an equal playing field in the classroom, teacher and students exploring a learning together. The teacher is responsible for making this happen and at the same time remembers that he will be learning too. It was one of the joys of Frank’s classroom.

Wisdom for Teachers in Troubled Times: Solace and Inspiration to Bring to the Classroom is the title of his latest manuscript. It consists of 99 entries, each with a commentary to encourage teachers to connect with students in ways that invite and inspire. They come from a wide variety of sauces from Zen to crabs in a cage. The book is designed to be a companion for teachers to refer to whenever they feel a need.

Frank realized in being with Russians, he had been a fragment of a hologram; a fragment that depicts the whole. The same was true for his classroom and teaching teachers. Each encounter reflected a larger whole of all his experiences. He continually searched for what worked to engage them, to activate their thinking.

Throughout his fifty years teaching, he engaged in frequent conversations with his students to find meaning and understanding in whatever they were studying. On his blog on this site, “A Teaching Life: In the US, England & Russia" and on his posts on Facebook, he pursues his same philosophy with his readers.

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