A New School Year: Get Off To A Good Start With Effective Classroom Management

A new school year begins, and, with it often come high hopes. You’ll do a great job of teaching, the students will behave perfectly, learning and test scores will be off the charts, and life will be great.

Then, the first days pass, and it might be clear that you have students in your classroom who have the potential to disrupt the classroom, upset the other students, and interfere with your teaching and others’ learning.

What now? How can you effectively manage your classroom so that students treat you and each other with respect, all of you come together as a group working toward a common goal, and the classroom is a joyful, productive place?

The first days and weeks of a new school year can be the most critical ones, setting the tone for months to come, which is why it’s important to get off to a good start with effective classroom management. At Education 4 Equity, we’ve designed an online professional development course on classroom management, using restorative justice practices.

The goal of restorative justice in schools is to create a positive classroom environment in which all students can learn. The traditional models of disruptive behaviors, warnings, disciplines, and suspensions, are replaced with a new paradigm that’s designed to repair relationship rifts and stop repetitive, harmful cycles.

Successful classroom management, using restorative justice techniques, takes into account:

  • students’ attitudes and behaviors
  • students’ traumatic experiences
  • students’ cultural backgrounds
  • students’ interpersonal dynamics

This online professional development course on classroom management will show you how to develop and use classroom procedures, norms, and support to promote positive behavior. You’ll also learn pre-emptive practices to help prevent negative or troublesome behavior, as well as how to defuse disruptions when they do occur.

The classroom management strategies in this online course can be effectively implemented by:

  • preschool teachers
  • elementary school teachers
  • middle school teachers
  • high school teachers

This 3-credit classroom management course is delivered 100% online and qualifies for graduate level credit. The course has also been approved for LAUSD salary points, through the Los Angeles Unified School District.