ASBO Teacher: An irreverent guide to surviving in challenging classrooms

Written by an author who has tasted both failure as a pupil and success as a teacher, this forthright but entertaining book shares the simplest solutions to the toughest problems in today's classrooms.

The teaching profession is suffering from information overload - much of which is either flawed, contradictory or stultifyingly boring. ASBO Teacher takes no prisoners when it comes to commenting on the views of some self-professed experts who, for example, all too often call for more 'engagement' or 'group work' as catch-all answers to complex questions.

Samuel Elliott has been the pupil from hell. He knows what he needed from his teachers in order to turn his life around - and now he shares that knowledge with under-supported, hard-pressed colleagues who just want to do the best for their pupils.

What Samuel offers in this book are no-nonsense principles hewn from the chalkface of the modern British classroom: ideas and approaches that have worked for the author in the most challenging settings with the most testing pupils. Covering a range of issues spanning behaviour management, lesson structure, resource preparation and narratives in the classroom, the book is a blueprint for becoming a particular kind of teacher - one who has high expectations, a concern for pupil well-being, and a knack for ushering learners into more effective learning.