Maribor, Slovenia

"Without belaboring the point, I would not be teaching today were it not for this program. In 1992, I was ready to quit the profession, not because I wasn’t reasonably successful, and not because I wasn’t enjoying myself, but because I was tired of working in a profession that seemed devoid of actual skills. I read reams of books on classroom management, motivational techniques, dealing with the discipline problems and teaching well, but it all seemed to boil down to a mountain of handy hints and good advice, rather than systematic techniques or practical skills above and beyond what the average untrained person would be capable of. Discipline problems? Get tough! (Or, alternately, hold a class meeting so everyone can “clarify their behavioral values” or put everyone on his own “behavior plan” and point system). Motivational problems? Make your lessons more interesting! Kids failing? Tutor them after class in your office, explain things more clearly, hire a teacher’s aid or lower your standards!

 

As you can imagine, I was less than satisfied with these answers. I wanted to work in a profession, not just a job. I wanted to have skills that, if properly implemented, would predictably result in the academic, behavioral and motivational success of my students – especially the worst ones. I did not want fancy lesson formats, elaborate B-Mod programs, values clarification or good advice; I wanted basics, the skills that comprise the teaching profession.

Those skills are the subject of Fred Jones’ Tools for Teaching. They are described with exceptional clarity (and not infrequently with a bit if tongue-in-cheek humor as well), and the result is not an amalgam of random, unrelated ideas, but rather a system of highly interrelated and mutually-reinforcing skills which, when carefully learned and practiced together, can turn even the most oppositional, failure-prone classes into fully functional work groups that any teacher would look forward to having – at a price that the teacher can easily afford.

 

Today, I am not only using Tools for Teaching as the basis for my classes, I am training other teachers in it as well. Right now I am training ten teachers from three departments at the school where I’m teaching in Maribor, Slovenia, and the response has been so positive that the principal has decided to apply for a project grant to enable us to bring this program to other public schools on Slovenia next year.

 

I would advise any teacher, teacher’s aid, administrator or staff development specialist to take a close and carefully-considered look at Tools for Teaching before investing time, effort and money into other programs which may be long on quick fixes and handy suggestions, but rather short on such things as slow, step-by-step practice of each skill during training, adequate background information on why techniques work as they do (and, just as important, when they might be susceptible to failure), and guidelines for implementing a simple but effective long-term staff development program at a school site, so that skills once learned are maintained over time, and can be effectively disseminated throughout the school site."

David H. Greenwald