Melbourne, Australia January 16, 2007
‘COAT OF MANY POCKETS, Managing Classroom Interactions’ by Jenny Mackay (ACER press, 2006), masters the hidden curriculum in every classroom.
This coat has a behaviour management skill in every pocket to help manage confronting, challenging or even threatening behaviour.
Any teacher can master the skills which create positive outcomes from challenging behaviour.
Robert bursts into the classroom, ignoring the teacher. On the way to his seat he deliberately bumps Mary’s desk showering her work onto the floor. At his desk he stares pointedly out of the window. The teacher registers Robert’s overtly disrespectful and aggressive actions. She carries on teaching. After a few minutes, with the rest of the class busy, she makes her way over to him.
“Having a bad day Robert?”
He looks up at her.
She says, “Need any help with your work? Let me know if you do.”
As she walks away, Robert reaches for his books.
The teacher in the example used three skills from a large number of ‘pockets’ she has and was able to get Robert on side, to cope with whatever was bothering him, and back working. No stress, no acting-out, no resentment, no punishment and no frustration. The teacher was able to assess that this was only attention seeking behaviour and then choose and apply appropriate skills. In this case an observation skill, an empathic skill and a supportive skill.
Jenny Mackay, a professional teacher and university lecturer, has used her experience and research to create a book with the cream of behaviour management strategies.
The strategies are presented in the form of practical interactive teacher-student skills which are used as the situation demands. Interwoven with the skills is an easy framework for learning how to apply them.
“Other behaviour management methods only teach what to do, not actually how to do it,” says Jenny Mackay. “No other approach to behaviour management does this,” she adds.
The book can be used by both beginning and returning teachers as well as any educator wanting to improve their skills and enhance their professional self esteem and productivity.
She has a BA from the University of Western Australia. She has taught at primary, secondary and tertiary levels as well as parent training. She is a behaviour management and discipline skills specialist and consultant and has taught exclusively in this field since 1993 in Great Britain, South Africa, the USA and Australia. In addition to running her own consultancy, she lectures part-time at Deakin University in Melbourne.
“All I do is slip on my ‘coat’. It keeps me safe, it gives me that extra confidence. When I face a situation in class – students playing up – I just slip out a skill from one of the many pockets in my coat and I deal with it. I manage the situation and the behaviour, and everyone can get on with their work.” – Ian Butler, teacher at St Francis Xavier Regional College, Beaconsfield, Victoria.
“Jenny, I will treasure all the information I have gained from you for the rest of my life.” – Pratibhe Bhalli, Australian Islamic College Kewdale, Western Australia.
ACER online shop Australian Council for Educational Research. http://shop.acer.edu.au
eBooks.com www.ebooks.com
Angus & Robertson www.angusrobertson.com.au
Dymocks www.dymocks.com.au
Booktopia www.booktopia.com.au
Amazon.com (soon)
Barnes & Noble (soon)
The author’s website www.behaviour.com.au contains contact information and a useful ‘Help’ section with case studies and example behaviour management strategies.
ISBN: 0 86431 469 8
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The magnitude of the current behaviour management literature is testimony to the lack of cohesion in this field. Barely a month goes by without some new silver bullet or gold standard emerging along with its disciples to join the current throng of adherents to a host of today’s behaviour management approaches, methods, systems, paradigms or models, all of which, in any event, “rest on the shoulders of giants.”
No single approach to behaviour management in schools has ever been shown to be superior to all others.
The author has spent 13 years researching the practical applications of the writings of the world’s most important and seminal educational thinkers, those “giants” of behaviour management: Haim Ginott, Rudolf Dreikurs, William Glasser, Lawrence Kohlberg, Sternberg & Salovey, and others.
The result is a book which cleverly avoids getting tied into any single paradigm because not all parts of any one approach to behaviour management will be equally effective in practice. Also, all popular models are accompanied by their own philosophy which won’t fit every school’s ethos, its community or every situation. The book circumvents this by having a broad cultural base and by being a synthesis of proven and universally effective behaviour management strategies and techniques.
This is smart and means the book can be used in any educational setting and alongside current behaviour management and discipline procedures irrespective of the school’s culture and ethnicity. But its uniqueness doesn't only lie there; the book also contains a real gem. For the first time in a book on behaviour management for teachers there is a detailed structured framework for learning and applying the content.
The framework develops and improves the teacher's everyday personal interactional skills to the point where they understand their own reactions to situations and can cope with virtually any acting-out behaviour, even that which is emotionally charged, confronting and intimidating. The book teaches teachers how to think on their feet, assess the situation accurately and apply the appropriate skilled response.
The content is easy to understand and apply and can be used by any teacher in any setting.
Jenny Mackay
7/127 Ferguson St, Williamstown Vic 3016, Melbourne, Australia
+61(0)3 9399 8491 or +61 0412 222 406
mail@.com.au
Dr Garvin Mackay
+61(0)3 9399 8491 or +61 0431 470 365
mail@.com.au
PRACTICAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS FOR TEACHERS
COAT OF MANY POCKETS: Managing Classroom Interactions by Jenny Mackay, ACER Press. $AU24.95 in Australia, US$32.68 all other countries. Plus postage.
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