About Scott Ervin

I teach adults to fix kids, classrooms, and schools.

I've spent over two decades working with kids. Most of my experience has been spent working with extremely difficult, at-risk, disturbed, abused, and neglected kids. As a full-time educator, I worked exclusively with populations in extreme poverty. For the last 11 years of my teaching career, I requested that all of the most difficult kids in my grade be placed in my room as a teacher and in my building as a principal and superintendent. For the last 5 of those years, I worked at the largest primary school in the United States and requested that all of the most difficult kids out of 400 third graders be placed on my class roster. In addition, students in other classrooms whose behavior made it impossible for others to learn in their assigned classrooms throughout the year were all moved to my room. My classroom always had the highest standards for behavior and was consistently the calmest in the school. Even with these tough kids, my academic results were excellent. One year, with a population that had a 95% poverty rate, 95% of my kids passed the Third Grade Reading Guarantee.

I have served as a principal, superintendent, and discipline specialist. The classrooms in which I have worked had poverty rates between 84% and 98%. During my tenure as a principal, we doubled the size of our school and maintained Continuous Improvement status, and, because I had trained our staff in classroom management skills, the behaviors in our building were similar to the ones in my classroom.

In my free time, I have mentored, both in and outside of school, neglected and abused kids, most of whom have had some combination of PTSD, drug affection, Reactive-Attachment Disorder, and/or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

I’ve published a book with ASCD, “The Classroom Behavior Manual,” and I also write a nationally syndicated newspaper advice column, “Ask the Kid Whisperer”.

I have a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, a Master’s degree in Education, and have held an Ohio PreK-3 Teacher’s License. I have taught classroom management as an adjunct professor at Antioch-Midwest and as a visiting lecturer at Kansas State University, Ohio University and Wright State University.