Quate and McDermott, former teachers and administrators, identify nine strategies teachers can use to motivate adolescents, give them challenging intellectual work, and keep them from dropping out of school. They emphasize work that is stimulating, is just beyond students' current skill levels, demands effort, and requires depth of knowledge, and consider the roles of the stance of the teacher, the nature of the academic work (and connecting it to the real world), and student access to work. The nine strategies are outlined--believing in a growth mindset, committing to students' potential, maintaining a passion for students as intellectuals, making the work call for academic demands, providing work that is transformative, grounding it in authenticity, creating a caring classroom, checking in to move forward, and building autonomy through choice--along with discussion of routines and rituals that arise from a teaching stance that engages students, how several teachers have implemented academic work and critical thinking, how student access impacts teacher planning and assessment, and examples of how teachers create access. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)