Students Who Drive You Crazy: Succeeding With Resistant, Unmotivated, and Otherwise Difficult Young People

by Jeffrey A. Kottler, Ellen I. Kottler

Take a proactive approach with your most challenging students! This second edition of a bestseller gives teachers a model to assess, understand, and respond to challenging students, plus new tables, charts, and reflection questions. Offering real-life scenarios from interviews with teachers, counselors, and school administrators, this updated volume

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2002

About the author

Jeffrey A. Kottler is a professor, psychologist, author, consultant, workshop leader, keynote speaker, and social justice advocate who has spent the past 40 years working throughout the world to promote personal and professional development among professionals and marginalized groups. Jeffrey has worked as a teacher, counselor, therapist, and consultant in a variety of settings including a preschool, primary and secondary school, university, mental health center, crisis center, and corporate settings.

Reviews

[Jamie Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have done a lot of reading about working with students who are difficult. More and more in our business, our students are coming to us with challenges that we were just not trained to handle and our support systems within schools are becoming less and less available. Almost all of the reading I have done is about the strategies available to me to use with the students either in prevention or reaction to students' behaviour. They have been valuable reading and have added to my bag of tricks.

This book was different though. This book was more about me, as the teacher, than about the students. Although the book in no way excuses student behaviour, it challenges the reader to reflect on what we bring to the conflict. It is written on the premise that the only behaviour we can truly control is our own. It goes through several examples of how our words, behaviours, tone of voice, past experiences and attitude can affect our interactions with students. This book gives helpful suggestions of how we can become aware of these things and change. In the end, it also gives the reader permission to let some things go...

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the book covered theory I already knew about, and there reaches a point in time when being reminded you can only change yourself isn't helpful. But the last chapter has some practical applications and there is an extensive resource list. Maybe I will be able to get more good ideas from one of them.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a helpful perspective on classroom management and building rapport with students. I appreciate that it addresses not just the behavior of the student, but the importance of the approach and reactions of teachers. It's a handy short read to help you with challenging students.