A Cat in the Doghouse

It’s time to transform your classroom into a more humane society

With A Cat in the Doghouse, the last in Michael Grinder’s Classroom Management trilogy, he proves again why he’s the go-to person in learning how to deal with the difficult and at-risk children in our classrooms today.

In this book, Michael uses the analogy of our beloved household pets — cats and dogs — so that we can easily understand what motivates all of our students. The techniques and tools he shares will transform your classroom into a more humane society.

Years ago, as a classroom teacher, Michael discovered our “dog” students love the routine of a traditional classroom, while our “cat” students – who love tension and risk – tend to be disruptive when they are bored.

Management by power just doesn’t work with our hard-to-reach (cat) students. With A Cat in the Doghouse, you will learn what does work to create a happier, safer classroom.

“Michael Grinder has given us the management skills needed to successfully reach the hard-to-reach students — we have to reach them to teach them.” –Pearl Nitsche, Educational Consultant

 A personal note from Michael Grinder

I was not surprised to find statistics showing that in the first three years of teaching, more educators drop out than students. We have to retool our management styles so that teachers are more effective in forming relationships with our hard-to-reach students.

When developing A Cat in the Doghouse, I noticed an interesting “side-effect.” Many teachers practicing these skills have higher job satisfaction once they realized that the cat students often have the potential to be more successful than the dog students.

Another profound insight from my over forty years of doing this work — management by influence is less likely to be miscommunicated cross-culturally than management by power.

I wrote A Cat in the Doghouse so that by being proactive, we can anticipate inappropriate cat behavior. We can then manage by influence with a calm understanding that “power, when used judiciously, is appropriate as a backup.”

A Cat in the Doghouse willingly suffers the disadvantages of generalizations so we are able to look at our own classroom more objectively. We develop more realistic expectations of our students, ultimately becoming more successful teachers. It’s a win-win for both teacher and our students.

Let’s be honest, as a group, we teachers are more dog-like than cat-like … working with cats in the classroom is an opportunity to develop more facets and become more charismatic by fully developing both our dog part and cat parts. Because I coach teachers and consult with administrators, I know how tireless and caring teachers are … it is to you that I dedicate A Cat in the Doghouse.