The First Days of School: How to be an effective teacher, by Harry and Rosemary Wong

The First Days of School: How to be an effective teacher by Harry and Rosemary Wong

This is one of the books I ordered online when I was certain I was moving and becoming a teacher.  It had solid reviews and seemed to be just what I needed.

I finished reading it a few weeks ago and wrote the review then also in anticipation for this blog.  I've got to say it was well worth the time and it's a must for every new teacher if not every teacher out there.  It's essentially THE manual for teaching.

The purpose of this post and any similar post where content is reviewed is to reinforce what I learned, to have something that can refresh my memory, and to give anyone interested in the book or topic area something worth reading. I'll do a review of the DVD it came with another time.

The books bottom line: The effective teacher is professional, creates positive expectations, creates and maintains consistency in the classroom, excels at classroom management, plans for lesson mastery, and plans out everything else.  

Gist

The intent of Harry and Rosemary Wong, both veteran school teachers, is to review the qualities and methods that all effective teachers have in common and how they can be implemented.  In doing so,  new and seasoned teachers can put the content into practice (hopefully and raise the achievement of all of their students and reduce their own stress level.  

The theme of the book is that teachers are the number one determinant of student success and that effective ones should be mimicked.  In fact, 'the effective teacher' is a common thread accross all chapters as each chapter ends with a quick summation of what that chapter defined an effective teacher as.  In summation, an effective teacher is one that is proficient, effective, and has an impact on their students lives.  Harry's and Rosemary's goal is to transform the reader into an effective teacher.

The book provides a range of ideas from minor details like the placement of things and layout in a classroom to more stimulating ideas like what it means to be a teacher and how to have a deep impact on students educational experience.  While the book is intended for traditional classrooms, the authors stress that all of the ideas in the book can be applied by any teacher in any setting as long as the ideas remain intact.  More on this later, unless of course I forget.

The book is effective as  its content is easy to pick apart and see the value of its application.  Equally important, it's clear that all of the content comes from experience, has been well thought out and carefully planned how it would be covered.  To boot, it's unambiguous, perfectly succinct, extremely practical, and just an enjoyable read.   I can say that I'll be applying this entire book to my new teaching position, it really looks to be that helpful and the best $20 (or so) I've ever spent.  Now, onto the content. 

Content

 

Like I said, the book is well organized.  It breaks down the material into units of overarching subthemes (units A - E) and each unit is further broken down into books chapters.   Important content is printed in bold without being distracting, key ideas are stressed with graphics or their own section on the page, and 'sidebars' range from 2x4(inches) to entire pages containing content such as statistics, insights, stories sent into the authors by teachers, to practical hands on tips.  Each chapter ends with a short, bulleted list with two to four points each only a sentence long reviewing what in the chapter defines an effective teacher.

Before breaking down each unit, let me sum the take home message.  Programs don't help students, teachers help students.  Throw all of the money you want at programs for students, if the teachers don't deliver then how can you expect anything more from students?  Over and over the Wong's stress that research has found that the number one determinant of student success is an effective teacher.  What defines an effective teacher?  To sum up about 300 pages, an effective teacher is a professional, accepts that teaching is a learning process in itself, has positive expectations of students and makes this clear, is an extremely good classroom manager and knows that classroom consistency is next to godliness, teaches for lesson mastery, and plans, plans, plans.

Just to make a note, I'm sure I'm not doing the book, it's units, and chapters the justice it deserves.

Unit A - Basic Understandings: The Teacher

This unit is the introduction to book itself and the central theme of the all important role of the teacher. Quickly, the effective teacher has positive expectations of students, can manage a classroom, and designs lessons with the intent of student mastery.  The first day of class determines your year (first impressions, much?) and the first few weeks only reinforce how things will shape out.  The Wongs couldn't stress enough the value of a first day script incorporating all of their knowledge and guides as well as during the first few weeks of school.

Time and time again the education system finds new, but sometimes recycled, fads that are not based on any research.  This research being simple hands on experience to more calculated and truly scientific.  The moral of the story is to go with what's proven to work (backed by research).  The unit 

Unit B - First Characteristic: Positive Expectations

At first glance, you might think that the unit is about the positive expectations teachers have for students and you'd be semi-spot on.  But once you really get into the thick of it, it's clear that the positive expectations concerned here go a little deeper.  The Wongs do emphasize the role of clear and obvious positive expectations teachers have for their students, but also the ones things around students and ourselves create.  To name several examples, the teacher's professional attire, attitude, knowledge, and forethought create student expectations of their teacher.  If they see an incompetent teacher, their expectations as learners won't be so lofty and set them up for failure.  The same rules apply to the classroom itself.  If the, I guess, ambient expectations do not create positive expectations for students and teachers, students AND teachers (more importantly students) are going to have ea hell of a time getting anything out of their education.

Unit C - Second Characteristic: Classroom Management

This unit thoroughly broke down how to run a classroom and yourself.  A stressed point was that discipline is used by ineffective teachers as a primary means of remediation of issues.  You don't discipline a store, you manage it.  Manage your classroom and your problems are greatly diminished in the first place.

The unit covers topics like self introduction, seating, how to start class effectively, how to take roll, grade management, how to have an effective discipline plan, how to teach students classroom procedures, and how procedures improve learning.  The underlying ideas here is to plan and be ready before doing  anything in your classroom and to have procedures in place for everything so that a very structured and consistent environment is generated.  Students of all ages really pickup on consistency and structure.  It creates a stable, predictable environment for students to work within.  Without consistency and structure, students are left to wonder about much and might feel lost or unstable in such an unpredictable environment.  Consistency is pivotal.

Unit D - Third Characteristic: Lesson Mastery

This unit's focus, lesson mastery, relies again on a well prepared, thoughtful teacher.  To teach for mastery, one needs to clearly define for students each of their learning objectives (whatever they may be) and emphasize each lesson's and assignment's relevancy to its corresponding learning objective.  Furthermore, lessons and assignments should never be generated until the learning objectives are clearly defined AND the test has been created.  Without clear learning objectives, the students and teacher won't know EXACTLY what is to be mastered.  To master each objective, there is a corresponding assignment.  For each objective, there are corresponding questions on the test being generated concomitantly.   After the test and its objectives are finalized, assignments for each objective can be created.  These assignments are the means to the end, the learning objective and lesson mastery.  By designing lessons based on tests based on objectives, teachers ensure clarity and consistency for students.

Another cornerstone of clarity is to have models ready for all graded work for students to see and to have a rubric/score guide for students to use.  Again, eliminate ambiguity.

Unit E - Future Understandings: The Professional

This unit concerns the importance for schools to have a culture of learning and a community of teachers with a common goal and vision.  The importance of teachers always being a student of education and never giving up on students is discussed.

All in all...

I think I did a decent job of getting to heart of the book's matters; although after reading my own writing it's difficult to say for sure what someone that hadn't read it would take away.  Personally I feel the book has prepared me to teach far, far more than I had imagined it would and will be using every single point of wisdom and advice this book has offered me.