Responsive Classroom Calendar

• January - April, 2008: Responsive Classroom one-day workshops are held in CA, CT, GA, NH, NJ, TN, VT, and Washington, DC.
• March 3, 2008: Registration begins for Responsive Classroom week-long institutes.
• April 7, 2008: Registration begins for the Responsive Classroom Schools Conference.
• June - August, 2008: Week-long institutes are held in CA, IL, OK, MN, NJ, NY, PA, TN, VA, WI, New England, and Washington, DC. Dates & locations
  
• July 22-23, 2008: Responsive Classroom Schools Conference is held in Boston, MA. More info

Book Notes

Making Your School Safe: Strategies to Protect Children and Promote Learning by John Devine and Jonathan Cohen

Principals, district leaders, and teachers concerned about children’s physical and emotional safety at school will find an intelligent guide in Making Your School Safe. Suitable for educators at all grades, K–12, this book covers issues ranging from creating an emotionally safe climate, to making a crisis response plan, to helping traumatized children. Devine, director of the School Safety Project at the Center for Social and Emotional Education (CSEE), and Cohen, co-founder and president of CSEE and a faculty member of Teachers College and the City University of New York, believe that to make schools truly safe, we must work in the school as a whole, in classrooms, and with individual students. They provide concrete advice on what to do at each level and suggest a practical five-step process for pulling all these strategies together.

An insightful chapter on bullying emphasizes understanding the three-way dynamic between the bully, the bullied, and the witnesses. The authors offer practical suggestions for teaching children to go from being bystanders, who simply watch when bullying happens, to being “upstanders,” who do something to help.

Break the Bully Cycle: Intervention Techniques Activities to Create a Respectful School Community by SiriNam S. Khalsa

Concerned about the seriousness of bullying, which he says affects sixty-five percent of students in American schools, SiriNam S. Khalsa wrote this book to urge adults to intervene—and to give them the tools to do so. In concise text, he offers a great deal of information on bullying:
behaviors and attitudes that cause it; how it hurts victims, bullies, and bystanders; and why intervening incident by incident is not enough. Khalsa, an inclusion coach in a large urban school district and a National Board Certified teacher, also offers dozens of anti-bullying strategies, interventions, and activities for use by school staff at all grades and by parents. Break the Bully Cycle could help a school develop an anti-bullying program, enrich an existing program, or help individual teachers deal with bullying in their classrooms. All pages are perforated for easy removal and copying. Includes a chapter on cyberbullying and a resource list.

In the Field

Responsive Classroom Consulting Teacher Courtney Fox Named Delaware’s Teacher of the Year

Courtney Fox, a first grade teacher at Mount Pleasant Elementary School in Wilmington, Delaware and a longtime Responsive Classroom consulting teacher, was named Delaware’s teacher of the year in October 2007. She’s now eligible to be selected national teacher of the year.

Courtney is “thrilled” about the opportunities that come with receiving the state honor, including visiting schools, meeting other teachers of the year, and addressing legislators in Washington, D.C. The best part so far, though, she says, is “how much energy it’s brought to my school. Other teachers have said, ‘it feels like we’ve all won,’ and it’s true!”

One of the things Courtney hopes to do in her new public role is to spread the word about the Responsive Classroom approach, which she credits with “making me the kind of teacher I am. The Responsive Classroom approach has made me think about what
I do as a teacher on a whole different level. It’s taught me to see all of my students in a positive light and to see my role as helping every one of them succeed.”

Developmental Designs for Middle School
 
Good news for middle school teachers and administrators!     
Origins, the nonprofit educational organization that serves as the midwest regional center for the Responsive Classroom approach, offers a program called Developmental Designs for Middle School. Developmental Designs for Middle School (formerly known as Responsive Designs for Middle School) adapts Responsive Classroom practices to meet the particular needs of young adolescents and the structure of their school day. Origins offers trainings, onsite coaching, and many other types of support. Learn more at www.originsonline.org.

A Website with Anti-bullying Strategies

stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov

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