I can’t put into words how meaningful it is to have a contemporary teaching tool written by a fellow female secondary English teacher, with the unique context of teaching in Western Sydney schools. Thank you, Claire! I absolutely loved this and can’t wait to try and implement everything that I have learnt into my own teaching practice. 🫶 Also, thank you for being so vulnerable about your experience as a beginning teacher, I felt very seen and many tears were shed.
I wish I had this book as a brand new graduate teacher but am grateful to have read it now anyway as a lifelong learner!
Claire is so right – we go in so insufficiently trained to manage behaviour & it can so easily lead to disillusionment. The examples of realistic scenarios and practical step by step detail provided are so applicable & would resonate with any teacher. I had Aha! Moments all throughout reading this. Sometimes it validated situations I have navigated and other times I made a note of the suggested strategy for next time and cringed a bit, especially thinking back to my first year or 2.
It made me feel a bit emotional reading Claire’s personal experience with her own schooling years as it mirrored mine – a quiet, studious primary schooler who became disengaged due to personal and familial issues during high school. I also had an English teacher who believed in me & I have often thought of him as a teacher myself as being 1 person who believed in me when it felt nobody else did. What a reminder of the great power we hold as teachers to remind students through our words & actions, that we see their inherent value and to make our classrooms a place of calm and structure for them.
Thank you, Claire, for writing such a valuable manual for teachers!
Very important read for teachers. It helped me immensely this year. I would highly recommend it!
However my favourite lines come right at the end..."Championing all students, starts by championing all teachers. If teachers aren't provided with this level of support does this mean they can't be outstanding? No, absolutely not! It just makes it a hell of a lot harder to do the job, do it well and come out with their well-being intact. This is why true teacher well-being doesn't look like a few cakes in the staffroom (although that certainly helps, too). It looks like this. A genuine commitment to placing the needs of the teacher, the heart of the education system, in the centre of what we do." p145 I'd love to read a book by this author that is about championing and supporting teachers.
After a year of failure and frustration supporting students with behavior challenges, this book reinvigorated my excitement for teaching by preparing me with a student-centered, compassionate approach to behavior management.