Teaching Self-Control Through Management and Discipline (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Bringing it all together with research
Review: After changing from First Grade to Fourth Grade I needed a good book on classroom management for the older age group and I found it in this book by Tom V. Savage. This book honors the feelings and conditions of both teachers and their students. It is very down to earth and explains the feelings that students have towards their ability to learn, school, their friends, and their teachers.I feel this new understanding of the student's feelings will make me a better teacher. This book is organized well and it is research based. The insights into the different types of personality characteristics I found to be very helpful. The first part of the book covers setting up the classroom environment, sharing the power with the students, giving them choices and ownership of their room and their discipline problems. It also covers lesson plans and how to flow through the day maintaining motivation and discipline. It asks questions and spells out the ways that teachers may need to change. The second part of the book continues with preventing problems as it explains how to deal with discipline problems using low-profile intervention methods and increasing the intervention with the severity of the problems. The book guides the teacher through a series of steps and questions to ask the students. The book stresses respect for the students and how it can help to prevent problems. The goal of the book is to teach students ways to grow in self-control without violence and making better choices for success. The book covers conflict resolution and the social problems of cheating, stealing, vandalism, drug and alcohol abuse. It gives keys to identifying causes of violence in schools and against teachers. This inservice text covers important material with lots of graphic organizers and questions for reflection. This book is easy to read and it doesn't waste the readers time, and it has the added bonus of not being a stuffy or boring textbook. I enjoyed the quick explanations and reasoning behind the methods. I recommend this book to all teachers.