Introducing A B Ready For Students

Hello, I’m Mr. Ballinger. Welcome to A B Ready.com, a website dedicated to preparing students to do college-level work, so that you can avoid having to take remedial courses in college. By “college” we mean education after high school, whether it is a large four-year university, a two-year community college, or a trade school, and everything in between. So, the question to you is: Do you want to go to college? If so, do you want to be ready to do college-level work? If you do, then you have come to the right place.

Being ready to do college-level work is the smart way to go because there are thousands of students who are accepted to attend college, but they lack the English language skills or math skills to take regular college classes. Those students have to take remedial classes to make up for the education they failed to get in high school. Only now there are two big disadvantages: first, those students have to pay for knowledge they could have and should have learned in high school. That’s wasted money. Second, remedial classes those students have to take do not count toward graduation from college. That wastes time. And when those students realize they have wasted all that money and time, they often get discouraged, so much so that they may not even graduate from college.

I was a high school classroom teacher for 34 years. I have taught hundreds and hundreds of adolescents. I know them; I respect them. I think they are some of the most fascinating people on earth. So, now, I am an Academic Coach. Just like in, say, baseball, the coach doesn’t stand in the batter’s box and bat for the player. A coach, however, does the following: encourages the players to do their very best, suggests adjustments to the players’ stance and swing, and helps the players reflect on their performance. Likewise, an academic coach builds your confidence in yourself, points out where you can make improvements, and shows genuine appreciation to you for meaningful accomplishments.

So, how do you know you are preparing yourself to do college-level work? Well, if you ask teachers how they know if a student is ready to go on to the next level, whether it’s the next chapter, the next semester, or the next year, here’s what most teachers will say. Students who are earning A’s are obviously ready. Students earning B’s are also successful at the next level. But teachers begin to hedge their bets on students making C’s. Why? Because students getting C’s have gaps in their learning. Therefore, those students are going to have to work harder to earn an A or a B. Students who are making D’s have even larger gaps and may not even finish the next level.

So, that’s what A B Ready means: if you are earning A’s and B’s in rigorous courses, you will be ready to do college-level work by the time you graduate from high school.

So, what do we mean by “rigorous” classes? They are those classes your school says will prepare you to do college-level work. Ask you teachers, school counselors, and school administrators if the courses you are taking will prepare to do college-level so that you will not have to take remedial courses in college.

Now, when I began helping students prepare for college, I thought I was going to have to deal with higher-level cognitive skills. I thought I would have to find ways of increasing a student’s I.Q. by 10 or 15 points. I quickly learned that was not true. I made a list of ten things that every student could do to earn A’s and B’s in challenging classes. I call it the A B Ready Code. One teacher called it the A B Ready Guarantee because every teacher I talked to has said that, if a student does all ten things in the code, that student will earn an A or a B.

So, if you are ready to make the most of your high school years, to prepare to go to college, I invite you to join A B Ready where you will have free access to all our video lessons and other resources which are designed to help you to be A B Ready for college, for career, for life. See you soon.