Guiding Children's Behavior

This comprehensive guide to classroom management is also the only book to emphasize observation as the best way to determine developmentally appropriate interventions. By following a process for observing children, educators will learn how to see beyond children’s manifest behavior to focus on their motivations, needs, and interests. Featuring a series of chapters organized by age, from birth through elementary school, this book:

• Helps teachers to individualize discipline practices, including ways to use the curriculum to prevent and manage challenging behaviors.
• Offers supportive vignettes and a menu of developmentally appropriate strategies that teachers can choose from.
• Questions the effectiveness of frequently used discipline methodologies, such as time-outs and coerced apologies.
• Includes a training module to help teachers, administrators, and parents to work together to create more consistency between home and school.
• Provides useful forms to keep track of peer interactions, teacher and student self-reflections, parent observations, teacher disciplinary practices, bullying, and more.

Eileen S. Flicker has worked as a teacher, child care director, curriculum coordinator, college professor, program developer, and educational and mental health consultant. She currently works in schools where she facilitates differentiated instruction and social skills groups . Janet Andron Hoffman is an educator, teacher-trainer, licensed clinical social worker, consultant, and an adjunct assistant professor in early childhood education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

“Few aspects of teaching are as worrisome to novice teachers as that of children’s ‘behavior’….These concrete suggestions are bound to be helpful not only to novices reading this book, but also to experienced teachers who wish to reformulate their practice.”
— Leslie R. Williams, Teachers College, Columbia University

“A highly readable resource grounded in developmental psychology and pedagogy. This book provides teachers with a conceptual framework that can be individually tailored for specific classroom needs. It is essential reading for any teacher wanting to understand and encourage self-discipline in young learners.
Lawrence Balter, New York University, author of Who’s In Control? Dr. Balter’s Guide to Discipline Without Combat

“An exemplary, practical, and powerful approach to child management that will be as helpful to parents and child care professionals as it is to classroom teachers. This should be required reading for everyone who shares responsibility for rearing and teaching children.”
Hiram E. Fitzgerald, University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University

“Successfully integrates management into the early childhood curriculum in a very meaningful way.”
Susan Recchia, Teachers College, Columbia University