Now that my second book, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work, has just been published, it’s time to get moving on my third book.

And I’d like you to help me write it.

This book doesn’t have a title yet, but here is how I’m describing it:

It’s focused on instructional and classroom management strategies geared towards developing student autonomy and personal responsibility (as opposed to student obedience or student rebellion); and on professional development strategies focused on a consistent ethic of improving one’s craft and maintaining one’s sanity.

It will also relate to all types of students and teachers — and all grade levels — and will not be limited to English Language Learners.

It will share a variety of strategies to deal with what seems to me to be fifty common challenges facing teachers in the classroom. Assuming I meet the manuscript deadline , Eye On Education will publish it in mid-2011.

As regular readers know, I try-out lots of different instructional, classroom management, and professional development strategies with those positive goals in mind. And I’ve only begun to share my experiments here in this blog.

I also know that readers of this blog have an enormous amount of experience. And I’ve appreciated and learned from many of you, especially through the What Do You Do? series of posts I’ve written off-and-on. Those posts actually gave me the idea for this third book.

So, this is what I’d like to try:

Each week, I’d like to write a post sharing two or three of the challenges I’ll be writing about in the book and ask for your ideas (based on your experiences in all grade levels — especially younger than high school) on how to respond to them in a way that, as I mentioned earlier, develops student autonomy and personal responsibility (as opposed to student obedience or student rebellion); and utilizes professional development strategies focusing on a consistent ethic of improving one’s craft and maintaining one’s sanity.

If your idea/experience/story isn’t already on my “list” via my own experience or from what someone else has already shared with me, and if I decide to include it in the book, you’ll receive written credit for it in the book and will get one free book — either this one, or you can choose from a selection of other titles from Eye On Education.  Of course, I’ll also recognize you in this blog!

Alice Mercer has already begun developing lessons appropriate for elementary school that connect to some of the themes of self-control and goal-setting that I’ve written about in this blog. I’m hopeful that the thousands of other teachers who read this blog can contribute a ton more.

I think this should be a fun experiment. And, even if it doesn’t work out as well as I hope, everybody will get to read a lot of great ideas people leave in the comments section of the posts.

For many of these challenges, I’m looking for ideas on both responding “in the moment” and for lesson plan ideas on how to preempt the problems before they start…

So, now for the first two questions:

How Do You Deal With A Student Who Is Being Disruptive In Class?

How Do You Regain Control Of An Out-Of-Control Class?

I’ve written many posts on both of these topics. If you’re not familiar with my thoughts on these types of challenges, you might want to read Have You Ever Taught A Class That Got Out Of Control? and “I Like This Lesson Because It Make Me Have a Longer Temper” (Part One). Those two posts will give you an idea of what I mean by “in the moment” tactics and setting the stage to help prevent the problems from happening to begin with.

Let’s get started!  Please leave your response to these two questions in the comments section of this post.

Thanks in advance for what I’m sure will be thoughtful contributions.