The main problem with the book is it is NOT user-friendly. There is too much space devoted to sidebars, and the graphics make the book very hard to read. Furthermore, Wong is in dire need of a blue pencil. If it takes him 338 pages to talk about how teachers should prepare for the first days of school, the mind boggles at how many trees would need to be killed for Wong to publish a book about planning for the entire school year. What is the point of Wong spending an entire chapter on "dressing for success" when other authors have spent one or two sentences on the subject? Chapters and sections devoted to irrelevancies such as dress codes and taking roll tend to have the effect of being insulting to teachers.

If you are a first-year teacher, I recommend you skip this purchase and instead buy the much better (and far less expensive) books, THE FIRST-YEAR TEACHER'S GUIDEBOOK by Bonnie Williamson, and THE UNAUTHORIZED TEACHER'S SURVIVAL GUIDE by Warner and Bryan.


Don't Walk Into The Classroom Without This Book!   September 19, 2000
 106 out of 118 found this review helpful

I won't go so far to say that this book could replace going through a teacher education program. But there is such a gap between all of the "theoretical stuff" you learn from your professors, and actual practice that this book has been literally a God-send to thousands of teachers.

Dr. Wong and his wife have put together a wonderful resource based on the experieces of hundreds of successful teachers. This book is designed to give the pre-service teacher, or relatively new teacher a handle on what can be, the overwhelming experience of managing a classroom.

This book deals in depth with what a successful teacher looks like, how to have positive expectations about student success, the sometimes elusive art of classroom management, designing lessons to foster student mastery, and the teacher as a professional educator.

Practical, sometimes funny and inspiring from beginning to end, The First Days of School will both strengthen and encourage you for the journey ahead. Buy this book today, and read it many times over. I did!


Don't believe the hype   September 20, 1999
 85 out of 108 found this review helpful

Don't let the five star reviews fool you - no book is perfect. My first frustration with this book was that it is definitely geared towards public school teachers and the elementary grades. While this obviously has its audience and its place, as a high school teacher in an independent school, I wish I'd known that before I ordered it.

Other than that, I felt as though I'd been promised specificity and gotten nothing but vague generalizations. Other than very strict instructions on shaking the students' hands the first day of school, I felt as though it was an introduction. Don't do fun activities, set down classroom rules! - they say. Okay, I say, give me some examples of classroom rules! Unfortunately, they don't. And as for the admonition that school should not be fun - you've got to be kidding me. I'm a teacher, not a drill instructor. Lighten up. If you've read "The Shopping Mall High School", you'll be alarmed at their students as consumers model, which seems outdated and dangerous. Their examples of teachers using the ideal of success as a motivation are well-intentioned, but disingenuous. I'm not trying to sell my students an education.

I'd target this book's audience not as *every* teacher, but as public school, elementary grade teachers with five to ten years of experience.


A good book for new teachers   May 19, 2000
 71 out of 78 found this review helpful

I first was introduced to Harry Wong through a set of videos my mentor teacher had. I found his advice useful, and I still use a number of those ideas today. Coming from a department that didn't stress classroom management very well, I found this book to be priceless.

This is a book you need to read BEFORE the "First Days of School". Some of the ideas take awhile to implement and many of them need to be in place from day one. You can't change you rules two or three times and not expect to upset the apple cart (no pun intended).

The only real drawback I saw in this book is, like so many things in education, this book is largely geared toward elementary teaching. Although it is useful to a secondary teacher, it really shines for the elementary teacher.

I don't have my original copy anymore. It has been passed down to new teachers over the last couple years, but each of them has found it useful.


Devious   July 19, 2003
 59 out of 72 found this review helpful

I am in a school district that gives this to every new teacher. Pity. I won't re-hash many of the other reviews who quite rightly recognize this book as having a dim view of students. I will simply relate one part to the prospective buyer.

One student manipulation strategy suggested in the book involves making a large construction-paper heart on a bulliten board, with smaller hearts bearing your students' names pinned to it. When a student misbehaves, the teacher is to remove the small heart bearing that student's name from the larger one and pin it somewhere else. It is then the student's job to earn his way back into the teacher's heart. The implications of this are sick and inhuman:

1) Love is conditional, like grades, and may be forcibly withheld to gain control of other human beings. (I disagree with the author; love is not a "prize" for doing well, and it's arbitrary removal is inhumane at best.)
2) The reason you should behave as I tell you (allow me to control your behavior) is so you can earn my love. This is the goal of your scholastic endeavors. (Once again, I disagree. Using emotional manipulation as a form of motivation won't help children to learn, only to submit.)

I could go on, but you get the point. This example is indicative of the base, devious techniques suggested in this book.