By Joseph Ciaccio (2004)

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The five-step approach designed and promoted by Ciaccio is pretty straight-forward and easily adaptable to most classroom situations. Another nice thing about this book is that on the whole, we are already doing this on a regular basis. Ciaccio's five-step approach cover: Meeting Mutual Needs, Changing Counter-Productive feelings, Ending Behavior Problems, Helping Underachievers, and Using Active-Learning Strategies. Meeting mutual needs takes up a large portion of the text, focusing on some basic modifications to help make the school day flow better: having fun, using the teachers talents and passions in the classroom, helping children, and creating mutual needs. According to Ciaccio, a classroom that creates mutual needs is structured using a hands-on, student-driven curriculum to meet the demands of state testing. When it comes to changing the existing counter-productive feelings in the classroom, Ciaccio focuses on the importance of empathy, taking care of yourself, gaining perspective (both students and teachers), and remembering that there can't be any external changes without first having internal changes. These two portions of the book were by far the most interesting to me, but nothing out of the norm. The last three portions of the book focus on general classroom basics: behavior, underachievers, and keeping an active-learning environment. What was nice about these sections was that he gives great examples and sample activities to create an environment of positive teaching. Overall, a good book for a discussion on classroom structure and beliefs.

-AP

Totally Positive Teaching: A five-step approach to energizing students and teachers