Book Review: Setting Limits in the Classroom, Revised: How to Move Beyond the Dance of Discipline in Today's Classrooms by Robert J. Mackenzie

My first book review. The book is Setting Limits in the Classroom, Revised: How to Move Beyond the Dance of Discipline in Today's Classrooms by Robert J. Mackenzie. I purchased mine from Amazon.com.

I feel that this is an excellent book. Though targeted toward classroom teachers rather than substitutes, I feel that this book will help everyone learn to respectfully teach children to make good behavioral choices. And I don't just mean teachers - parents, too!

The book helps readers identify their own style of teaching, and then highlights the author's best method for implementing classroom discipline. His approach is practical, and utilizes what he calls the "democratic" approach to discipline. Basically he suggests providing immediate choices for consequences for negative or unapproved behaviors. This allows the student to have a hand in his discipline, and allows the student to save face - keep respect. Of course the trick, as with all "self-help" books, requires that the reader implement these techniques consistently. This, of course, can be difficult to do! But as with all good things worth doing, practice makes perfect.

This book is about creating and keeping a respectful environment while still teaching the students that there are consequences for their actions.

Mackenzie writes this book in an easy to read fashion, and lays the concepts out simply, using examples from multiple grades. He also uses diagrams to simply illustrate his points.

I found that in my case I was particularly able to see these examples in the book - DESPITE being new to substitute teaching - because of my experiences with children... including my own. I could actually identify my own children as "compliant" or not, and see the teacher examples from the book relating to how I relate to each of my own children. Mackenzie himself uses an example from his own family for one lesson on how each student differs from another.

A great read, informative and well-written, nicely organized, and terrific information!

A+ review