First, I should start by saying I'm a 23-year-old teacher who graduated from Penn State University. I've been teaching now for about 5 months.
I have bought about a dozen education "how-to" books from Amazon over the past year, and the best purchase I have made (by far) is the first book by this author, "Classroom Instruction that Works." So I think that my expectations when buying this book may have been too high.
The best part of this book is, like the first book, everything is based solidly in research which is outlined in a detailed, yet easy to understand format. However, this book just doesn't thrill me...here's why:
1) Part of this book focuses on school-wide discipline systems. This is pretty much useless to me as a classroom teacher.
2) Unlike "Classroom Instruction...," this book's design is to break each item down by first talking about the issue in an elementary school setting and then in a secondary school setting. Therefore, right off the bat, about half the book is useless to me.
3) This book describes the biggest management factors and where specific problems can arise, but it doesn't go into specific solutions.
4) Lastly, I feel that this book isn't as in-depth as I was hoping for. I think any teacher with any amount of experience is probably beyond the suggestions in this book. Overall, my students are well behaved, but I have one class that is consistently a problem. I was hoping this book would give me a new idea or approach. It didn't. Honestly, I'm way past making eye contact and proximity, if you know what I mean.
Overall, this isn't a bad book, but I can't say I found it helpful. Honestly, I hope the author got lazy or was rushed when writing this. Part of me is afraid that maybe this book is top quality and I'm the reason the management tools aren't working in my troubled class.
While, I haven't been very successful in finding a good, practical book about classroom management, if you're looking for a book about instruction techniques, I would recommend "Classroom Instruction that Works."