On the Edge of Their Seats: What the Best Teachers do to Engage and Inspire Their Students by Mark E. Jonas and Douglas W. Yacek, Chicago: Post & Lintel Books, 2023

The best teachers have a clear sense of purpose regarding their role as educators; they seek to provide their students with a good education, far beyond helping their students obtain good grades. According to Gert Biesta (2015), in addition to engaging students with content and knowledge, a good teacher’s professional practice is completed by two other domains. First, the domain of socialization, which involves introducing the student to different traditions, and forms of being and doing. Second, the domain of subjectification, which views the student as an agent with responsibility and initiative, rather than an object reactive to the actions of others. During lessons, many teachers want to see their students connected to the classroom, with a sense of curiosity, and with the desire to learn for much more than merely instructional purposes. Instead, however, they often encounter students who do not actively participate in class, are not involved in the learning community, or who behave counterproductively. Disengagement is a real challenge for teachers in the 21st century, especially among older students and students from marginalized social groups (Christenson et al., 2012). Therefore, many teachers might wonder what they can do to overcome the boredom pandemic affecting their students and how to promote aspiration instead (Yacek & Gary, 2023). Mark Jonas and Douglas Yacek’s book, On the Edge of Their Seats, offers a possible solution to this challenge, arising from their personal discovery of the transformative potential of teaching. The book is dedicated to their students, who have been their main source of inspiration in their teaching careers and professional development. Over the years of teaching, they have compared their experiences with those of many other teachers from very different contexts, years of seniority, and disciplines. The result of these conversations, observations, and mentoring is the four-step framework described in this book, although the methodological decisions and procedures are barely described. What the authors found through deep analysis of what they call “the best teachers” is that certain characteristics stand out. Despite the contextual and personality differences among the teachers the authors spoke to, some attitudes, methods, or decisions were shared by many of the interviewees. The scope of the resulting framework is not presented as a recipe to follow. Rather, teachers’ professional expertise is absolutely respected by the authors, providing through their framework a source of inspiration that every teacher must develop in their own context. Teachers from middle school to higher education are the principal target audience of this book. The authors are convinced that sharing how teachers can inspire students and contribute to their students’ transformation and growth through the subjects or disciplines they teach is crucial. If doing so, teachers may reconsider their teaching methods and attitudes, as well as discover or rediscover the internal goods of their own profession. With the aim of helping to promote an inspirational culture of teaching, this book is a practical and accessible guide full of real-world examples that can help teachers transform their teaching to make it valuable and engaging for students. The book is divided into nine chapters. In the introduction, the authors define the book’s central purpose: “this book is about what makes these teachers exceptional and how other teachers might follow their lead. It is about what teachers need to do to bring students consistently to the edge of their seats” (p. 3). The subsequent chapters delve into the four-step framework for engaging teaching put forward in the book: the Hook, the Pitch, the Awakening, and the Strengthening. In the second chapter, each of these phases is described theoretically so the reader can grasp …