Introduction The Purpose-Driven Student details my credentials and life events leading me to become a Purpose-Driven Student and later a Purpose-Driven Professor at Arizona State University. When I was a teen, it was common practice for young boys to drop out of school to become coal miners. Our schools taught coal mining as the best place for young men to work. I thought school was a waste of time because coal-miners needed little education. During elementary school, my father became ill with a fatal black lung and could no longer work in a coal mine. He opened a small grocery store, about the size of a two-car garage in the front, with two pool tables in the backroom. Selling groceries earned barely enough income. My younger brother and I suffered as low-income students. We were poor white trash! I am a native of West Virginia, a state known for supporting the coal-mining industry and ignoring educational funding. My school had limited space for youngsters from the fifth through the eighth grades. We attended half-day morning sessions and other pupils used the same classroom during the afternoon. My low-income student status taught me that prejudice is a clear and existing hazard to self-confidence and learning. The Purpose-Driven Student lights the path of student higher performance by: - Helping teachers remove student constraints imposed by poverty - Using positive peer pressure to create an innovative learning culture - Simplifying a course using The Purpose-Driven Student teaching method - Reaching and teaching Low-income pupils - Building up a student centered classroom - Applying detailed plans to increase teaching and learning efficiency - Transferring learning responsibility from the teacher to the student - Attacking the reason public schools have low-income pupils - Confronting the cause of American middle income shrinking to the low-income class - Recognizing that education ensures better-paying jobs with greater chances of holding employment - Advancing the principle that students learn faster and in greater depth through positive peer pressures. The Purpose-Driven-Student presents teachers with needed tools to turn a low-income student for a lifetime of poverty into a successful adult. An energy-filled adult with a vision of the future is unstoppable in reaching a satisfying career destination. That means a lifetime filled with joy-going to work Mondays and sometimes holidays-because they adore what they do for a living. I recognize without any question that I endured a low-income status during my younger years. Nevertheless, in my adult years, I mastered the difficulties my low-income status presented, and achieve each goal set in my teaching vocation. This book details a method to transform hundreds of low-income pupils who have little hope of lifetime achievement, engaged students with a purpose-filled life. Students without a purpose are often content with whatever grades they earn and never reach their full educational potential.