Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students By Their Brains,   ISBN:9780787974718

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but you can do many of these in your class. While geared more toward an English class (the author does teach English, after all), many of the ideas and strategies can be used by other teachers. The author focuses on organization and behavior management, which is sorely needed in classrooms today. She gives real world examples that, if done right, have a wonderful effect on the classroom environment.
Unfortunately, there are so MANY tips, the teacher reading this may feel overwhelmed and discouraged from trying any of the tips. My advice is to pick a few strategies and use them in class. Then, start to build upon the foundation and you will see some changes in the classroom attitude and environment.
Overall, the book is a good resource especially for secondary teachers.

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As other reviews have said, this is a good book for a new teacher. As an experienced teacher, I didn't find that much useful. I did find a couple of approaches I hadn't thought of (assignments for rude people, for example) as well as some ideas for portfolios. Overall, I didn't find much in the book I haven't read or heard elsewhere.

When dealing with problem students, she always talked about calling security if things got to the point where the student had to be removed from class. We don't have security at our school. While we have problems, our problems don't come anywhere near the problems she had to face.

It's not a bad book. In fact, I plan on giving my copy to my language arts team member who is entering her second year. The book really was not what I was looking for.

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There are good and interesting things in this book but there are also many opinions on teaching which may appear a bit shocking to the usual (non extraordinary) teacher on the block.
This book will certainly not teach you how tos, so do not expect this but it shows one experience of teaching from one person only. It is still quite interesting to read. Maybe you can plan on following the example Johnson is provided you have no private life, and especially no children. I, personnally, spend a lot of time working for the kids in my classes but my students come way behind my family and my son's interests, one of them being my availability. People without a family hardly know the importance it has in someone's life and work shall remain at its due place: providing for the family. Let the people who have no family throw themselves under work, live to work... Teaching is a job, like any other job, in spite of what some would like us to believe. I don't think one should consider that work as SOOOOOOO important either. We as teachers are no gods!!! So if you share my views on this, you'll certainly find some parts of this book a bit provocative and full of spite.
And yet it is worth three stars AND worth reading.

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"Teaching Outside the Box" deals with what is at the heart of all great teaching and learning. Empathy. Patience. Tolerance. There have always been two schools of thought when it comes to dealing with under-supported kids. There is the path of swift and immediate justice. In short, the kids must pay. The must pay, yet again, for coming from tough homes or crumbling neighborhoods. They must succumb to a foreign value system when entering the classroom with little or no background knowledge of what great potential and possibility life can hold for them. And teachers who see themselves as "tough" break their already broken spirits down further. There is another path, though. It suggests that the greater respect and love you give children, the more you get back. This one, however, just takes longer. But it is well worth the wait. "Teaching Outside the Box" comes from this school of thought. And it represents it very well. It is a must-read for any teacher who feels they were called to the profession; who feel they are in those classrooms not simply to teach, but to alter the course of young lives. It should be mandatory reading for all who work with children.

Chris Bowen
Author of "Our Kids: Building Relationships in the Classroom".

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As an experienced elementary teacher, I especially appreciated the relatively novel features of this book. For instance, while discussing the layout of the classroom for effective learning, Johnson mentions the distracting effects of classroom odors, and recommends that the teacher invest in an air purifier. She notes that music being played can calm the children. And, when discussing children who have reading difficulties, she mentions scotopic sensitivity. This is the problem caused by the high contrast between black print on white paper, which is often aggravated by fluorescent lighting. One solution to this problem is the provision of transparent, colored overlays to cover the printed page.

Johnson opposes ability grouping. She also strongly opposes forcing children to read out loud who don't feel comfortable doing so. This only humiliates them.

She eschews the authoritarian approach of teacher-student relations in favor of one based on mutual respect. As an example, she mentions a cowboy (Craig Cameron) who trains horses to accept their saddles (pp. 112-114) instead of chasing them, confronting them, and forcing the saddles on them. She believes that all teachers should study Cameron's methods and apply them to children.

Despite respecting their students, teachers often still have difficulties getting respect from their students. Johnson (p. 25, 236) believes that this stems from the teacher, perhaps unconsciously, projecting an "I am here to fix you and save you" attitude. Children then get a sense of being inferior, stupid, or wrong, and react accordingly.

As for grading, Johnson comments: "Instead of dumbing down the curriculum when you work with unmotivated or underachieving students, try smartening them up instead." (p. 167). Also: "Ironically, the students who claim to care the least about school are the same ones who complain the most about the bad grades they earn." (p. 160). She is a firm believer in frequent progress reports. In some classes, students can earn at least a "C", regardless of how they do on tests, if there are no unexcused absences and all the assignments are adequately completed.

Her book ends with a list of useful websites (URLs) for teachers.