The Classroom Behavior Manual: How to Build Relationships with Students, Share Control, and Teach Positive Behaviors

I love teaching. I love kids. I'm an Elementary Art Teacher and kids like coming to my class and I have pretty darn good classroom management. But teaching is getting more and more tiring and the behaviors are getting worse and more kids are exhibiting negative behaviors. As much as I love my job, my health suffers every year. I often feel like I may not make it to retirement before throwing in the towel someday.BUT THIS BOOK HAS BREATHED NEW LIFE INTO ME!I attended Scott's training before reading the book and it was the SINGLE MOST POWERFUL AND USEFUL PD OF MY CAREER! Ok. I'll stop all caps for now. :)Seriously, this book will teach teachers to prevent many behaviors before they start; respond (rather than react) to behaviors in a way that keeps the teacher calm, teaches the student how to behave appropriately, and strengthens the realtionship between the teacher and the student in the process.This book is not about coddling or ignoring and it certainly also is not about punishing kids either. It is about teaching kids HOW to behave appropriately. When kids misbehave it is because parents and schools have taught kids that they get what they want (attention and control).No more stick and carrot reward charts. No more giving more attention to the high flyers and forgetting about the quiet well behaved kids. No more stressed out teachers. No more behaviors getting worse as the year goes on or as the kids get older. Behaviors will actually improve!Please do yourself a favor and READ THIS BOOK. I think it could change education in our country! Do it for yourself and for your students and for society as whole. Can you tell I'm excited?!

I have read the book and attended many of Scott's sessions. This book will change your career. The strategies he presents in the book not only make sense but they WORK. My favorite is the argument shield. If you are feeling burnout, The Classroom Behavioral Manuel needs to be in you cart!

A teacher at my school recommended this book and I'm so glad I picked it up! I've done Love & Logic (Family and Classroom) training, Kagan training, Capturing Kids' Hearts training, and RULER training. As I read the book, I could see pieces of all of these, but the way he puts the pieces together makes so much more sense to me. It's like nothing I've ever read or had training on. Even though I'm doing most of the things mentioned in the book, I'm not doing them correctly and I'm not doing them consistently.I was hooked. The same teacher sent me info that there was a 3-day training happening and I went on my own dime. Seeing all these strategies and procedures in person was priceless. I'm happy I've got a week to Ctrl + Alt + Delete my library (I'm an elementary teacher librarian) and find a way to make my life and my students' lives better this year. So grateful! I'm all in!This manual is beyond amazing. I plan to overload my students with greetings, noticing, and choices with assertive calm, in addition to, holding them accountable through delayed appropriate consequences, not punishment, in an empathic way.

This book gives a lot of great ideas for bonding between you and your students and students with one another to have a positive overall classroom environment. I have seen aspects of this book applied at the Ron J Clark Academy and in Whole Brain Teaching, both which I admire, so I am hoping to implement this book's suggestions this year.

I really wanted to give this book 5 stars, but I found that too often, the author jumped ahead of himself. For example, pg. 173, Just like Real-World Workshop, use Gentle Guidance Interventions (GGIs) ONLY FOR BEHAVIORS THAT DO NOT HAVE TO DO WITH voice level. Except...GGIs don't come for another chapter, so I felt like I had to continually go back and forth. Aside from that, I thought the content was great.

I waited to write this review. I purchased this book after the most challenging class I'd had to date. I have just started my 19th year of teaching and 3rd year of using the procedures in this manual. It has completely changed my view of misbehaviors in the class, and how students deal with them. Yes, students, not me! If teachers are working on behavior more than the student, we're doing it wrong. I love how it doesn't simply say to build relationships with students, but tells you how. I pick and choose the relationship building strategies that work best for me and my first graders. The first time I read it, I read it beginning to end. It was a little tricky because some terms were mentioned that appear later in the book, but I kept reading and it all made sense. This book is the best thing that happened to my teaching in 19 years.

As a career-changing teacher who is starting out 20 years past college, this book was above and beyond exactly what I needed. I’ll be working with the same types of kids as described in the book, and I found working as a para this past year that yelling and losing my temper did nothing to help (and left me crying in the staff bathroom more than once).At the start of summer I purchased 7+ classroom management books. As I started each one, none seemed to fit my personality or instincts just right. This one felt like it was for me immediately.Does it work? Now that I can’t confirm yet. Ask me next summer. But I’m going to implement these strategies and stick to it this year. I feel less intimidated than I was in May.

I highly recommend this book to all teachers, administrators, and school staff. It is the most meaningful and practical manual on behavior management.