The First Year Teacher's Survival Guide Summary

In this week’s reading, Julia G. Thompson discusses how to prevent and manage discipline problems in the book “The First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide” (FYT). Five useful tips Johnson shares with us regarding this topic are becoming a consistent teacher, when teachers should act, behaviors teachers should not accept, how to avoid a lawsuit, when teachers should act, and how to control anxiety with proactive strategies.

Personally, I find it hard even with younger siblings, to be consistent when “no means no”. For this reason, I can see myself struggling on being consistent with my students. As explained in the FYT, “consistency is one of the most important tools you have in preventing problems” since it provides students with boundaries for their expected behavior (Thompson, 434). Once being able to manage consistency in my classroom by practicing the guidelines suggested by Thompson (e.g. being prepared, reteaching rules, avoiding idle threats, etc.), a positive outcome is that students will have a set of expectations that they are less likely to break since they will be aware that there is no tolerance for misbehavior in the classroom. On the other hand, students may feel the need to challenge the ongoing consistency and rebel against rules to see how far they can get into getting what they want.

However, after reading how simple it is to avoid encountering any confrontation with the law is, I found myself a little more at ease. By obeying the school policies and being openly about the mannerisms of your classroom, it is not difficult to avoid lawsuits. A positive outlook on this is that teachers won’t have to constantly fear the possibility of a lawsuit, Although the rules are self-explanatory and easy to follow, a negative side to this is that teachers may get too comfortable into thinking that lawsuits are non-existent and may unexpectedly find themselves with an incident involving the