"The First Day of School" — What a Bill of Goods

"The First Day of School" is a best-seller in the education training business.

I received a copy of this book the first day of teacher credential school.

At South East High School in South Gate, the lead teacher who wanted to prepare us for the next academic year also offered to

Dr. C., the instructor who was also a history teacher at Los  Alamitos High School, told me that this book revolutionized his teaching.

I do not know if I can agree with this assessment.

The book has a number of glossy pictures and references from other teachers, including instructors from across the country who have commented that  the book really "saved their bacon" when it came to classroom management.

I devoured this colorful and frilly work. I thought that if teaching really were as easy as Mr. Harry Wong and his co-author sister Rosemary really claimed, then I should have no problem managing a class and making this thing called teaching work for me.

Two Wongs did not make a Right, not in the slightest. They advertised that teaching can be easy-going for the teacher, that the work day starts at 7am and ends at 4pm.

"Life and love begin for me at 4 o'clock."

Surprising that this man did not include his work in the classroom as part of life — and in all truth, life seems to end as soon as the teacher walks into the classroom. The students assembled into martinet-like rows, assembled strangers into classrooms with 35 or more peers, when in the real world we assemble with individuals of all shapes and sizes. Nothing could be more anti-thetical (and unethical) to life, perhaps, than a classroom. In that sense, then, Mr. Wong is correct.

One of the most important things that new teachers have to learn is time management — they cannot spend their every waking moment grading papers and preparing lessons, supposedly, although some of the most important teachers have claimed that sometimes they put in thirteen hours a day.

Thats' just nuts, in my opinion. What can a teacher give to the students if he spends no time whatsoever outside of the classroom? Life and loved do not begin for many teachers during their first or second year, unless they are the barely-get-by type that I had chosen to be.

"The First Day of School" glosses over the basics of the reasons why a person goes into public education, the importance of procedures, the necessity of following directions and respecting the bylaws of the local school board.

He spends two chapters talking about how people need to decide what they want to do with their lives, how they can having anything they want, if they can just articulate their goals. A teacher can be a mentor, and administrator, a principal even. Thinking over the contents of those books, I am appalled that Wong and Wong pushed out on new educators an  empty shill of a book filled more with empowering maxims than powerful tools for teaching young people.

How many picture of Rosemary Wong did I have to look at? There was that warm picture of Mr. Wong beckoning his hand to the camera, as if I or anyone else would want to walk into a classroom.
Yet the advent of personal technology has made classrooms more obsolete, in my view, and the directing and drill-sergeant like-teacher is a big anachronism at best.

Still, Mr. Wong, I am certain, is more interested in making money than making teachers, and the prevalence of his books suggested without hesitation, from Cal State Long Beach to South Gate, that the book had received a great deal of press.