Coral Gables Senior High social studies teacher Mr. Pollard has officially published his first installment in his “The Book Everyone Should Read” series: “Motivation and You”. Inspired by his own children, his book takes a sociological and psychological approach to help people discover who they are.

“I think it’s something and my example from that is, whenever you put an address into a GPS, you need to know where you’re going, but you also need to know where you are. So I don’t know if we really focus so much on telling our students like who they are, where they are, how they are before we start pushing them into, you know, forward action,” Mr. Pollard said.

Always quoting someone or giving a motivational speech, Pollard was encouraged to write his book by his colleagues. Additionally, he regularly listens to motivational speakers and takes notes on any concepts that touch him on a personal level. Eventually, this consistent practice enabled him to compile a list of ideas that would aid him once he started writing his book.

Although Pollard’s book contains themes generally directed towards teens, he was primarily writing it for his 7-year-old children to read. The one key takeaway that Pollard wanted his kids to hold on to after reading his book was that if you have a goal and set your mind to achieving it, you will have spare time for it. No matter how busy you are, you always have time for the things you set your mind to.

“Now if what I’m saying resonates with people, and everybody who has read it has said, you know, wow, it spoke to them on a different level, but that wasn’t my goal. I thought in time, I like doing things because I like doing it. I want to do what I want to do. I want to write a book, so I wrote a book, and then that book led to a second book, and then a third book, so it’s not about the money you know,” Mr. Pollard said.

Although having recently published his first book, Mr. Pollard has already written its sequel, “Courage, Love and Discipline”, and is actively writing the final installment of this series, “Origins and Actions”. Leaving money as an afterthought, Mr. Pollard hopes that the readers of “The Book Everyone Should Read” series will connect with him and will be able to find themselves.