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THE TACTICAL TEACHER
profession: to help those most in need of your help. I invite the teacher in you to call on your better angels and ask them to help you accept the responsibility for showing some of your most difficult students that there is a different path they can choose. It is in accepting responsibilities such as this that teachers realize their greatest potential for engaging in rewarding work— making a difference to that one student.
ABOUT THIS BOOK I have structured this book into seventeen short chapters, each one focusing on a particular motivational or influence strategy or the background information necessary to understand why these strategies work. I did this so that teachers and administrators can easily return to the specific chapter or chapters that focus on the influence strategies they want to utilize in their practice. Please also note that because family structures vary in significant and critical ways, I use the term caregivers throughout to refer to any adult person acting in a parental capacity for a student. I’ve organized this book into three parts: (1) Natural Selection and Student Behavior, (2) Soft and Hard Tactics, and (3) Ethics and Unseen Motivators. You cannot make effective use of this book’s soft and hard tactics without understanding why your students behave the way they do, which is why chapter 1 kicks off the first part of the book by exploring student behavior through the lens of natural selection and how it impacts the way people view their world and how they respond to a variety of motivators. Chapter 2 helps develop an understanding of student behavior by taking a close look at how the hardwiring of natural selection plays out in the way students behave and react to their peers and to their teachers in schools. You will understand more deeply why students behave the way they do and how you can use the hardwiring of natural selection to influence more positive student behaviors. In part 2, you begin your exploration of tactics that enable you to use your understanding of students to positively influence their classroom behavior. This part
includes chapters 3–15, with each of the following chapters highlighting a specific group of influence tactics. • Chapter 3 looks at the ways in which a student’s self-image governs their behaviors. We then look at soft tactics that influence your ability to positively impact a student’s self-image. • Chapter 4 examines how all people are hardwired to want to return favors to people who have done something for them. It shows how to utilize the rule of reciprocity in your classroom to establish effective working relationships with students. • Chapter 5 demonstrates clearly how much better students learn and how much more cooperative they are when they like their teacher. This chapter shows you how to get your students to like and respect you and how student achievement improves in the process. • Chapter 6 shows you how important it is that your students know you are committed to them and their learning. It also explores the substantial power of commitment over the long haul in getting students to change their negative behaviors into positive ones. • Chapter 7 takes a look at common classroom dynamics that most often go unnoticed by teachers and students alike. It highlights how, by becoming aware of these dynamics and utilizing their hidden power, teachers can subtly but effectively improve student behaviors and achievement. • Chapter 8 explores strategies for persuasion, using models and approaches the FBI developed over many decades to successfully negotiate a positive end to high-stakes confrontations; it describes how you can effectively use these same tactics to positively influence students.
