Customer Reviews

The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher

5 star:		(110)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

The First Days of School, is number one on the MUST READ list for anyone who aspires to be a good teacher. I'm in my thirty-first year as a high school science teacher and for the last nine years I have used this invaluable resource as a guide. I have obtained great ideas and strategies, priceless advice, valuable insight and inspiration. Using ideas from this resource concerning classroom management, lesson mastery, professionalism, positive expectations, et cetera, a teacher can formulate his/her own style to make themselves a much better, more effective professional educator. Dr. Wong's book applies to all teachers - rookies, veterans, elementary, middle school, and high school - alike. It provides a multitude of "time-tested" practical ideas, strategies and techniques which will make your teaching more effective, fun, exciting, meaningful, relevant, enjoyable, rewarding and successful. You will be at your best everyday; your classroom will function smoothly and at top productivity; and your students will leave each day with a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.

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.

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!

I first was introduced to Harry Wong through a set of videos my mentor teacher had. I found his advice useful, and I still use a number of those ideas today. Coming from a department that didn't stress classroom management very well, I found this book to be priceless.

This is a book you need to read BEFORE the "First Days of School". Some of the ideas take awhile to implement and many of them need to be in place from day one. You can't change you rules two or three times and not expect to upset the apple cart (no pun intended).

The only real drawback I saw in this book is, like so many things in education, this book is largely geared toward elementary teaching. Although it is useful to a secondary teacher, it really shines for the elementary teacher.

I don't have my original copy anymore. It has been passed down to new teachers over the last couple years, but each of them has found it useful.

I thought I knew how to manage a classroom and work with children, but my first year was confusing. All those things they teach you in college education classes just don't work in the real world. But I came upon this book during the summer. I was amazed at all the mistakes that I had been making and could now understand why I was having problems in maintaining order. I started out the new school year with the various techniques and ideas that the authors suggest. This year is so much more organized; my classroom activities just flow, classroom control had greatly imporved, and the students seem to be learning more, as test scores climb. It has centaily made my life as an educator much easier. I especially appreciated the chapter which makes you look at yourself and see if you are merely a "teacher" or are you a motivational "educator". I have shared this book with others who have been in the profession for many years and they have all have had high praises for the book. I understand that several of the surrounding colleges are considering adding this as a text to their educational programs. I honestly feel that graduating students would be far more prepared to fact actual classroom situtations with this knowledge under their belts.

This book has shown me, a first-year teacher, the most effective ways to budget my time, energy and resources. There are so many valuable examples and suggestions for behavior management, procedures, setting rules, and overall ways to be a highly successful teacher. This selection goes beyond theory and actually shows the reader a path to take in order to be the kind of teacher that makes a positive impact on the lives of children, parents, and collegues alike. Reading this book decreased my anxiety in the few weeks before my first teaching experience, simply because it helped me realize exactly what I wanted my classroom to become. I highly suggest this to any teacher, new or veteran, as a refresher course in why we have chosen this career and how to be our best!

I was given this book by my school district three days before I started teaching 9th and 10th graders in an urban school. Most of what I found was not very useful to my particular situation. Wong seems to assume that new teachers are provided all the tools they need to get started, when in reality, many fledgling teachers (like me) didn't have a classroom and shoved around to a different room every period. When I saw the picture of the tidy desk with the plan book opened to the day's painstakingly complete lesson, with Wong's caption that this first-year teacher was "ready for the first day of school," I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I didn't even have enough copies of the ten-year-old literature textbooks for all my students, and I had to push three class sets of texts for my three preps on a cart all day.

If I would have tried the "give me five" method of getting my seventh-period general 10 English class to quiet down, they would have "given me one," if you get my meaning. Maybe that works with elementary school kids, but high school kids would laugh in that poor teacher's face.

In my opinion, if you want a really good book that helps you cope with real kids and real situations, get Louanne Johnson's _Two Parts Textbook, One Part Love_ instead!

I have seen tremendous results using the effective practices from Dr. Wong's book. As a principal, I make sure all the new teachers I work with have a copy of this book and view "The Effective Teacher" video series. Even experienced teachers have benefited from his expertise. His words and laughter have changed the practices of many teachers.

I'm puzzled by the comments posted by the high school teacher working in an independent school who feels that the book is aimed only at public elementary school teachers (see review below).

Dr. Wong's book is aimed at ALL teachers in schools public and private, grades K-12. I've used the book (and the complementary videos) with middle and high school teachers in our PAROCHIAL school. Those teachers who have implemented even a few of the books' suggestions have enjoyed significantly fewer student problems than those who just sail along doing the same, tired old things in the same, tired old ways. As for examples of classroom rules, they're THERE in black and white. I fail to see the problem.

I have been an educator for over 20 years and have been using Dr. Wong's book for the past six. How I wish I'd had it for the fourteen years previous!

This one's a gem--buy with confidence.

I have been a high school English teacher for 10 years. In the summer of 1998, Harry Wong spoke to our faculty and this book was available for purchase in the lobby. I bought it and read it with the guarded suspicion typical of many "veteran" teachers who are actually stuck in "survival" mode. I read Wong's book and implemented some of his ideas in my classroom during the 98-99 school year. That year was the most positive of my teaching career, with only one office referral all year! I am rereading the book this week gearing up for the first day of school, August 19. I will implement even more of Harry Wong's ideas this year. I recommend this book to everyone, and not just first year teachers. I believe this book is even more beneficial to veteran teachers, who will be shaken when they recognize themselves in the many descriptions of the ineffective teacher, and realize that they could be the effective teacher with just a few changes. READ THIS BOOK! Borrow it from a friend, order it from Amazon.com, go to your local book store, beg your administration to add a copy to your school library--just get it!!