Rating: 
Summary: What a marvelous help this book is for all teachers!
Review: This book is incredible! I am continuously referring back to it. It has wonderful ideas from classroom rules to classroom management to testing and evaluation. The author lists great stories of teachers who have made good decisions and those who did not and have learned from it. I believe many people consider this book for first-year teachers, but it has definately been used well beyond my first year. It certainly is worth the reading. I encourage all teachers to read this
Rating: 
Summary: Good for elementary, too naive for middle school
Review: I have just finished my first year teaching and found "The First Days of School" useful for setting up a classroom but not for dealing with extreme problems.Wong's book was an excellent resource for me when I was given a job description, a classroom, and little else. Wong will explain to you how to set up everything from your gradebook to your classroom management system. He stresses the importance of routines and procedures to classroom management, and he is indeed right. If you teach in a school where the students are used to structured classrooms and consistent discipline systems, this book will cover most of what you need to know. Buy it, implement it, call it heaven-sent. HOWEVER: Wong fails to address the WHAT IFs of classroom management like: what if I'm doing all of these things and the kids are defiant? What if all 35 of them decide to act up? What if I totally lose it? These were the major questions at my school this year, and many of were dissatisfied by the way Wong assumed children would react. Case in point:
In a discussion of logical consequences for a child not entering the room correctly, Wong suggests that you tell the child to do it over again until he does it correctly. I'm sure that a 2nd grader would repeat the procedure correctly and sit down. An older child at a school with a consistent discipline plan might do this as well.
At my school this year, our 7th graders (who had every 6th grade teacher walk out on them the year before and had gone through five Junior High teachers this year already) would do one of the following:
1. Scream obscenities at the teacher and leave the room (not to re-enter correctly but to ditch);
2. Re-enter incorrectly until the teacher went crazy and wrote the kid a referral*;
3. Some combination of the above choices, drawing the teacher into a time-consuming referral* while the rest of the class (35+ kids) got out of control.
*The referral would likely not be seen at the office anyway, so the kid's gotten off without a punishment and the rest of the class got away with missing 10 minutes of instruction. Does this sound out-of-control to you? I certainly hope so. If you find yourself in a situation where students have become accustomed to these behaviors and you want to break them of these behaviors and actually - get this - teach something, BUY FRED JONES' "TOOLS FOR TEACHING" instead. Fred Jones will teach you practical solutions for these problems. He taught me how to deal with the preceding situation and many others, and I'm actually excited to go back next year. Harry Wong seems nice, his tools are useful, but the second a kid is extremely defiant, his book flies out the window. Jones will teach you how to eliminate backtalk - and it works.
Rating: 
Summary: Help for Teachers!
Review: It's a known fact that education majors consistently score lowest of all majors - on standardized tests, current affairs quizzes, foreign policy, etc. They enter teaching as softies used to scantron tests in sociology, etc. Assuming they can read at all, they should get this book. And teachers who are in a union shouldn't say knee-jerk, "Not my job." I suggest you read it anyway!
Rating:
Summary: Don't Walk Into The Classroom Without This Book!
Review: I won't go so far to say that this book could replace going through a teacher education program. But there is such a gap between all of the "theoretical stuff" you learn from your professors, and actual practice that this book has been literally a God-send to thousands of teachers. Dr. Wong and his wife have put together a wonderful resource based on the experieces of hundreds of successful teachers. This book is designed to give the pre-service teacher, or relatively new teacher a handle on what can be, the overwhelming experience of managing a classroom. This book deals in depth with what a successful teacher looks like, how to have positive expectations about student success, the sometimes elusive art of classroom management, designing lessons to foster student mastery, and the teacher as a professional educator. Practical, sometimes funny and inspiring from beginning to end, The First Days of School will both strengthen and encourage you for the journey ahead. Buy this book today, and read it many times over. I did!
Rating:
Summary: You can teach an old dog new tricks.
Review: After teaching twenty three years even I enjoyed reading this book. The things that I do year after year needed a new edge. It was refreshing to get a new viewpoint and ideas to spice up my classroom management. Older teachers get in a rut and depend on what works and tend to do the same old thing year after year. Why fix it if it isn't broken mentality. A few afternoons with this book got me excited in trying new things and looking after what I have been doing in a different light.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: This book is an excellent resource for educators! I purchased it along with a copy of "Truth in Grading: Troubling Issues with Learning Assessment" by Whitney, Culligan, and Brooksher - and have found them both to be extremely beneficial in the classroom! I think both should be mandatory reading for new teachers and teacher education majors in college.
Rating:
Summary: A MUST!!
Review: ABSOLUTELY A MUST HAVE!!! at least for someone new to the teaching profession.
GREAT RESOURCE!
VERY USER FRIENDLY!
EASY TO READ & FOLLOW!
I am a 30 something f/t mom, former business executive, who is changing careers. My kid's principal recommended this book & I'm so glad I took her advice. I am confident in the board room and/or training adults -- this book has given me the tools to be confident in the classroom with kids.
Rating: 
Summary: More of a scold than being helpful
Review: This book is required reading for my pre-service training. I found it frustrating and irritating. First, Dr. Wong tells you that as a new teacher, you're going to make mistakes, and your mistakes will cause problems. Then he explains that if you stop making mistakes, you'll stop having problems.
No argument here, but most teachers are not Dr. Wong, and mistakes will happen in spite of the most dilligent application of his advice. This book would have been significantly more helpful if it discussed how to monitor your performance and stop making mistakes.
Rating: 
Summary: School is not the army
Review: Wong's suggested tactics are phychologcally brutal. Many rave reviewers here also acknowlege this fact, softening it up by saying things like "It may be a bit harsh" or that it's hurtful to "more sensitive students." In fact, most of the rave reviews indicate this book's many flaws, like so "Well, this book is a little harsh and hurtful, and a lot of it is common sense, but a lot of teachers need to read it!" It seems as if proponents of this book see it as "Teaching for dummies." Of course, no one would admit to being that dummy, but there seems to be a consensus among proponents of the book that lots of OTHER teachers are. And this goes right along with the view the book has of children. Wong does not respect children; it's obvious by the way he insists on controlling them at the expense of either their self-esteem or their opportunities to problem-solve. The theme is "Your students are too dumb to think for themselves, so you do it for them." Wong, like many of the reviewers here, seems to have the same view of his fellow teachers.
Rating:
Summary: Too Good To Receive Comments That Belittle
Review: Quite a number of the posted reviews attack this book as being overrated and of little use. Some of the comments come from university students in colleges of education, while others come from seasoned veterans. The attackers (of this book that has sold over 2 1/2 million copies) claim that much of the content is rather elementary and speaks down to teachers. However, things that may seem "elementary" are frequently not carried out in the actual classroom - and author Harry Wong knows that. What is "common sense" to one person could be very uncommon to someone else. Personally, I believe that if more teachers read this book with fresh eyes and open minds, they may dress differently and relate differently in the classroom.
I know that we can't go back, but when I was a student in the 1950s, my teachers dressed professionally and related to students professionally. There was something about women wearing suits or nice dresses and men wearing ties that gained my respect, not to mention the respect that resulted from their discipline. My student experiences and recollections carried over into my own teaching career. I still can't get accustomed to teachers wearing jeans, sneakers, and sweatshirts, and being more "buddies" than authority figures for the students.
No, I don't agree with all of Mr. Wong's methods or techniques, especially when dealing with insecure, sensitive students. But you have to take his philosophical advice with a grain of salt as you apply it to specific situations. His ideas, however, have been effective for him and countless others - and we should keep this in mind.
Is the book perfect? No. However, I agree with another reviewer who said that it is, by far, the most valuable resource she has ever seen for new teachers and for teachers that want to continue to master their profession. To say that it is a "waste of time," as some reviewers have written, is like saying that the Bible is a waste of time because you disagree with parts of it and can't understand or relate to most of it.
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