Reviews

Teaching with Love and Logic: Taking Control of the Classroom by Jim Fay

belwood303's review

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3.0

Written 20 years ago a lot of the "cutting edge" and "out-of-the-box" concepts are now pretty common sense. Still it gives some good examples and walks you through how to apply logic to conflicts with students. Would be most helpful to have more application and less repeative preaching about why we should try this approach but it would need to be updated first.

emjen16's review against another edition

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informative inspiring slow-paced

5.0

leeleeinok's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

paigeinthepages_sg's review

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hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

The overall themes in the book are pretty effective. I enjoy that this is a classroom management plan created to create less work on the teacher end, not more. Love and Logic focuses on teaching with empathy, not anger and allowing students to learn from mistakes and be intrinsically motivated.

I do however think this book is incredibly repetitive and could be organized way better. You could get the same points across effectively in half the page count. Also had to deduct a half a star because one of the authors admitted to hitting a special needs student 🤨. Also most of the "real life" anecdotes seemed very made up.

Long story short good theory bad execution.

jen77's review against another edition

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challenging funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

hellohannahk's review against another edition

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5.0

The best book I've ever read on teaching. I wish I'd read it at the beginning of the year and not the end! I started seeing results in student behavior as soon as I implemented some of these techniques. It's definitely geared more toward middle/high school students rather than younger kids, but a lot of the principles are applicable to all kinds of teachers, in my opinion.

zpitts's review

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medium-paced

4.25

khschook's review

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3.0

The anecdotes and the dialogue in them come across as unrealistic, to put it very mildly, and therefore distract from the work's message. Nevertheless, there are gems in this book.

storywarden's review

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4.0

Sold on the program. Only lost a star because some of the chapters felt repetitive. :)

mschlat's review

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3.0

Of all the books I've read so far on classroom management, I believe the Love and Logic approach fits best with my personal philosophy: give the students as much control as possible over their environment, backed up with natural and reasonable consequences and teacher consistency. The goal is to educate students in making good decisions while preserving their self concept while off-loading work from teachers onto students.

The problem is that the book --- while it has a solid philosophy --- is difficult to read. You have tips and experiments spread throughout the book, often with little connection to the surrounding text. There are lists and lists and examples and examples, but often not enough connective tissue to put it all together. There were a few times when the authors would refer to the Four Principles of Logic and Love, and I would go "what were those again?" You also have the problem of different chapters written by different authors with slightly different agendas. That begin said, the last chapter (with specifics on strategies of intervention) works very well.