Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students By Their Brains [Paperback]

LouAnne Johnson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0787974714 | ISBN-13: 978-0787974718 | Publication Date: August 15, 2005 | Edition: 1

From seating plans to Shakespeare, Teaching Outside the Box offers practical strategies that will help both new teachers and seasoned veterans create dynamic classroom environments where students enjoy learning and teachers enjoy teaching. This indispensable book is filled with no-nonsense advice, checklists, and handouts as well as

• A step-by-step plan to make the first week of school a success
• Approaches for creating a positive discipline plan
• Methods for motivating students, especially reluctant readers
• Strategies for successful classroom management
• Suggestions for creating and grading student portfolios

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Each teacher must have a toolkit of time-tested strategies that are effective with all types of students. Teaching Outside the Box is the unique resource that also acknowledges the importance of each teacher’s personal attitudes and beliefs about teaching. I am recommending this book to every teacher I know!"
--Gayle Robertson Jones, Safe and Drug-Free School Coordinator, Oklahoma State Department of Education

"LouAnne Johnson is an exceptional teacher who is unafraid to grapple with the untidy human realities of teaching and learning, and who is willing to share the secrets of her success with others. Teaching Outside the Box offers a wealth of important questions and answers that all teachers should seriously think about."
--Edward Pajak, director, graduate education, Johns Hopkins University

"As a student, I wish all teachers would read this book. If they put these strategies to use, school would be more fun. Teaching Outside the Box shows how you can be an awesome teacher if you just use some common sense, a little creativity, and a lot of caring."
--Liana Carsner, age 11, Tipp City, Ohio

From the Back Cover

How to Bring Out the Best in Both Teachers and Students

From seating plans to Shakespeare, Teaching Outside the Box offers practical strategies that will help both new teachers and seasoned veterans create dynamic classroom environments where students enjoy learning and teachers enjoy teaching. This indispensable book is filled with no-nonsense advice, checklists, and handouts as well as

• A step-by-step plan to make the first week of school a success
• Approaches for creating a positive discipline plan
• Methods for motivating students, especially reluctant readers
• Strategies for successful classroom management
• Suggestions for creating and grading student portfolios

"Each teacher must have a toolkit of time-tested strategies that are effective with all types of students. Teaching Outside the Box is the unique resource that also acknowledges the importance of each teacher's personal attitudes and beliefs about teaching. I am recommending this book toevery teacher I know!"
—Gayle Robertson Jones, Safe and Drug-Free School Coordinator, Oklahoma State Department of Education

"LouAnne Johnson is an exceptional teacher who is unafraid to grapple with the untidy human realities of teaching and learning, and who is willing to share the secrets of her success with others. Teaching Outside the Box offers a wealth of important questions and answers that all teachers should seriously think about."
—Edward Pajak, director, graduate education, Johns Hopkins University

"As a student, I wish all teachers would read this book. If they put these strategies to use, school would be more fun. Teaching Outside the Box shows how you can be an awesome teacher if you just use some common sense, a little creativity, and a lot of caring."
—Liana Carsner, age 11, Tipp City, Ohio

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (August 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787974714
• ISBN-13: 978-0787974718
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Biography LouAnne Johnson

LouAnne Johnson is a former U.S. Navy journalist, Marine Corps officer, high school teacher, and the author of The New York Times bestseller Dangerous Minds. A native of rural northwestern Pennsylvania, LouAnne served nine years on active military duty first as an enlisted journalist in the Navy and later as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps where she earned awards for her work as a journalist and radio-tv broadcaster. 

While on active duty, LouAnne earned a B.S. in Psychology. Following her honorable discharge, she attended graduate school to earn a Master of Arts in teaching English. In 1989, LouAnne began teaching reading and writing to non-English speakers as an intern at a high school in California. Two years later, she was appointed department chair of a special program for at-risk teens. During the government evaluation of 10 similar pilot programs, LouAnne's group was rated first in academic achievement, increased self-esteem, and student retention.


In 1992, she wrote a memoir My Posse Don't Do Homework, about her experiences working with at-risk teens. The book was published in eight languages and was adapted for the 1995 box office hit "Dangerous Minds" starring Michelle Pfeiffer.


Since then LouAnne has continued to teach. She has taught high school English, adult ESL and Developmental Reading and is presently a full-time professor of teacher education at Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico.

LouAnne also continues to write. She is the author of seven nonfiction books, most recently Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students by Their Brains.

Muchacho, LouAnne's first novel, was published by Knopf in September 2009. The narrator of Muchacho, Eddie Corazon, is a 16-year-old juvenile delinquent and "secret reader" who attends an alternative high school in New Mexico.

LouAnne has presented keynote addresses to the National School Boards Association, the American School Counselors Association, the National Staff Development Council, and the European Council of International Schools, among others. She has appeared on several TV shows, including Oprah, CBS Eye to Eye, and NBC Weekend Today.

LouAnne maintains a website that has direct links to many of the topics she discusses during her presentations.

www.louannejohnson.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

129 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, pragmatic approaches for building a classroom, September 10, 2005

By 

Teechah (Southern NH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students By Their Brains (Paperback)

I've already used some of the methods I found in Ms. Johnson's book, and share much of her general philosophy of working with kids from difficult backgrounds. Even after 10 years of being fairly successful at teaching "at-risk" kids, I found that seeing the logic and reasoning of her approach on the page clued me in to many of the principles behind a successful classroom which I already used, but never saw fully articulated on the page. It sounds a bit bizarre, but I now have a better understanding of the "hows and whys" of what I do from reading her work. These are the tips that you didn't get in college regarding working with challenging older kids; it's both an intellectual and visceral approach to teaching that will help you avoid many confrontations with kids before they ever happen, and give you the understanding of how to handle the battles you can't avoid. Holding kids to high standards of behavior sends the message to your students that you believe that they are capable great things, but it can take years to build the skills a teacher needs to get to that point. This book is the blueprint for building a successful classroom.

There is also a lot here about understanding kids that have to return everyday to very difficult lives at home. Many teachers of kids with tough home lives fail because they never really understood the lives of the young people they were dealing with. Understanding the reasoning and emotions behind unreasonable classroom behavior is the key to minimizing it and surviving as a teacher, and this book reminds us that these behaviors have roots in what these kids have to go through everyday. There is much here to remind you of the positive and long-lasting effects a caring teacher can have, and that the balance of positive reinforcement with a tough determination for high standards is key to getting the best out of our kids.

I've always been struck by the fact that a greater community hasn't been built by the teachers that work with challenging students, but maybe that comes from the fact that we're cut from a different cloth. The unfortunate aspect of this lack of community is that many of us build our approaches from scrap, taking the best of what we see in our coworkers, and trying methods that we come up with on the fly. There's just so little accumulated knowledge on our curious line of work passed down from one generation of experienced teacher to the next. Also, there are many aspects of working with tough kids that will never make it into the education school textbooks, a manifestation of the great and ridiculous divide between educational research and classroom practice (don't even let me get started on that topic). The helpfulness of educational academia's theories can be said to be directly correlated to the years they've spent teaching in difficult circumstances. You may be able to quantify the number of kids that respond to a reading program that your district will never have the money to buy (and you will never have time to teach), but they will never fully comprehend the necessity of learning to deliver a warm and sincere compliment, or chillingly-cold stare, at just the right moment. This book delivers the goods to those that wish to help the kids that most people have given up on, to work for little more than the knowledge that they did something that needed and deserved to be done.

88 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Godsend Not Just For Educators But Also For The General Public!, April 6, 2006

By 

Avid Reader (San Marino, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students By Their Brains (Paperback)

I followed Ms. Johnson's story ever since the movie based on her books and experience, DANGEROUS MINDS came out in 1995. I have had different careers, including secondary teaching. I have taught students with the same characteristics that she describes in MY POSSE DON'T DO HOMEWORK, GIRLS AT THE BACK OF THE CLASS and TEACHING OUTSIDE THE BOX.

Out of all of the resources about methods of teaching, TEACHING OUTSIDE THE BOX tops my list of the greatest. 95 percent of the other resources like Harry Wong's THE FIRST DAYS OF SCHOOL always assume that every teacher has no more than 20 students in the class and that most students are highly motivated and respectful of all of their teachers. Ms. Johnson, on the other hand, addresses the "what if your methods do not work"? She describes endless specific examples of what exactly a teacher could do if a teacher has more than 40 students in a class and it seems like no one is listening or on task.

While Ms. Johnson offers some of her fabulous lesson plans like on ROMEO AND JULIET, she also explains psychological theories of possibilities why difficult kids and even difficult adults behave the way they do.

I also love how this terrific resource includes the letter that Ms. Johnson sends to all of her students. She further printed actual letters from kids and adults asking her for her advice, which I found both entertaining and tear jerking. The question that 10 year old "Big Momma" wrote and Ms. Johnson's reply was hilarious!

Even if you are not a teacher, counselor, or other educator, I highly recommend TEACHING OUTSIDE THE BOX. I wish that I would have had this book when I worked in business management because then I would understand more why some adults behave the way they do; Ms Johnson's theories have lots of implications for working with adults. The chapter on "Twenty Years From Now" will bring back memories of your life experiences for anyone, no matter how old you are!

AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ!!

Oh, and just yesterday, I contacted Ms Johnson via e-mail after discovering her website. I was not expecting her to respond because she must receive e-mails and letters from all over the world. Ms Johnson responded with just amazing advice! This shows her ongoing dedication!

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem for teachers old and new!, December 12, 2005

By 

Mark Phillips (Marin, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students By Their Brains (Paperback)

This book is a must for beginning teachers and for pros who need new ideas. It combines street smart practicality with the creative thinking we need to reach kids today. I plan to use it immediately in my university level teacher training courses and recommend it highly to the teachers I work with in the field. We do need to teach outside the box to make education meaningful for today's adolescents. LouAnne Johnson understands that and her book will make it possible for more teachers to get there.