Christian LeBlanc does a chapter-by-chapter comparison of what I say in my book to what he does in his class. Full disclosure: Christian had the chance to save me from me disaster early in the process — he’s one of the dozen or two teachers and catechists I had as beta-readers on my manuscript. Turns out the book more than passes, despite edits and additions since he did his reading of the first draft.
On the topic of manuscript-readers, take a look at this quote from Christian’s review:
Enforce: I like the sound of that- ENFORCE. But Jen first points out that “You cannot control your students. You cannot.” A timely observation: just this week I experienced the oddest behavior I’ve ever seen in a classroom in my entire life, and we just worked around it ’til class was over. Anyway, Jen lists about 10 discrete problems and solutions from her own classroom; and to the extent that I have those problems, my solutions are virtually the same.
The money concept — that you cannot control student outcomes, but can only control your own reactions and behaviors — is one that John McNichol gave me a big thumbs-up on. When I went to cut the book in half for my first re-write, that bit stayed in mostly because John said it was so important. I figured if he who teaches middle school said something was important, it was.
