Course 1: For new educators, nothing seems more daunting than the first day of school. The excitement of meeting new students, enacting curriculum, and pacing instruction can be overwhelming for those who are new to the profession. Building and nurturing a culture in the classroom is the first step to creating a lasting school community that will be supportive, engaging and empathetic. A classroom built upon a unique bond of culture, respect, empathy, and rigorous learning standards will become stronger, and in time, need fewer forced rules and consequences. The ultimate classroom is a community which expounds learning as an objective and self-discipline as a norm. The normative values of the classroom become explicit through the use of culturally relevant teaching techniques, community building experiences, and social justice action, thus creating a classroom that has innate trust and common goals. This course explores culturally relevant pedagogy, as a way to infuse the lived experiences of students, to create a highly effective learning community. Other topics include incorporation of social justice techniques to create a classroom that values learning throughout the school year, foundational theories to field practice in order to understand how research is applied, and building relationships that extend from the classroom to the school community, and explore “who we are” and what are our roles as educators. Course 2: This course introduces the foundations of backwards planning, differentiated instruction, and using state standards to guide instruction, and other strategies to support students with disabilities. For new educators, planning instruction to support a population of diverse learners is challenging. Instruction focuses on how to meet the academic needs of specific populations of children including students with disabilities, English language learners, and gifted learners, different learning styles, diverse teaching methods and various ways to differentiate instruction to all levels of learners, state standards, and how they influence instructional planning. Students design a highly effective unit plan that incorporates learning targets/goals, objectives, differentiated strategies, and instructional outcomes. Course 3: “I taught it, so they must know it” is a very common sentiment among new teachers. This course explores various forms of assessments that push academic achievement, as well as assessments that allow teachers to understand what conceptual understanding gaps exist and the strategies needed to support student academic needs.  Assessments are more than just a formal summative standardized exam or scantron quiz. Many assessments come in the form of daily informal actions taken in the classroom to assess on the spot, which guides adjustments to instructional outcomes in order for all students to meet the class objectives. Other assessments ensure unit integrity by assessing towards the end of the unit. Daily assessments come in various forms and are needed to guide instruction. The focus for this course is learning varied tracking techniques, which allows participants to use assessment results to quantify student success, develop highly effective lesson plans, and guide their daily instruction.

Course 1 and 2: Major topics include: Instructional Vision, Building Relationships, Behavior Management, Delivering Consequences, Managing Classroom Procedures, Starting Class and Entry Procedures, Introduction to Standards and Planning, Creating Objectives and Assessments, Delivering Direct Instruction, Culturally Responsive Teaching, Universal Design for Learning, Eliciting and Interpreting Student Thinking, Backwards Design, Data-Driven Instruction, Educating All Learners, Reflecting on Implicit Bias, Family and Community Engagement, and Bias in Special Education and Discipline.