Available courses

Session 1 - Setting Sites: Planning an Effective Educational Environment

  • Introduces teachers to the responsibilities they will face in terms of securing textbooks, supplies, and equipment for teaching, as well helps them anticipate and proactively plan for teaching in an environment with resources that may appear to fall short of the ideal. Suggests strategies for reaching out to parents, community organizations, and businesses to obtain resources that cannot be accessed through school budgets.
  • Suggests strengths and weaknesses of various seating arrangements and provides suggestions for arranging space to provide students with support and reference materials.
  • Provides suggestions for easing the task of handling daily paperwork.
  • Addresses safety and security issues, both in terms of becoming aware of school policies and procedures, as well as ensuring that teachers’ learning environments promote safety both during typical student activities and in the event of students whose actions become a threat to others.
  • Guides approaches to developing and maintaining web pages, as well as school and personal social media presence
  • Suggests methods for decorating the room and providing reference materials, posters, and so on that promote students’ feelings of competence and interest in teachers’ classes.

Session 2 - Provisions and Equipment: Developing Classroom Policies and Procedures

  • Examines the roles of teachers, students, and parents, providing teachers with insight into ways to communicate those roles to students and parents in ways that encourage students to maximize their efforts.
  • Provides a template for a classroom management plan, addressing differences by grade level and considerations for content taught.
  • Describes systems for maintaining communication among students, parents, and administrators, as well as methods for keeping accurate records that reduce the potential for disputes to arise.
  • Emphasizes unique demands for safety placed on teachers as they work with students.
  • Provides sample policies for handling in-class and out-of-class emergencies, along with discussion of strengths and weaknesses of those policies.
  • Suggests methods for practicing emergency procedures that maximize students’ abilities to respond in real emergency situations.
  • Provides templates to assist teachers in creating their own policies, along with tips for translating written policies into success with students.

Session 3 - Forces of Nature: Understanding Legal Issues

  • Builds teachers’ confidence by highlighting the key legal concepts, terms, and circumstances that revolve around the unique nature of the educational environment.
  • Presents court cases and hypothetical circumstances to enhance teachers’ abilities to achieve their goals without creating avoidable legal difficulties.
  • Demystifies due process as it applies to teachers, students, and parents.
  • Highlights teachers’ legal responsibilities as professionals to provide safe environments and to recognize and report incidents of suspected abuse and other sensitive issues related to student welfare.

Session 4 - Charts and Stars: Planning Curricula and Lessons

  • Discusses the importance of learning standards, especially in relation to state and national standards, and assists teachers in finding and understanding standards that affect their plans with their students.
  • Provides a system for developing a comprehensive, standards-based curriculum for any level at which teachers may find themselves responsible, including grades, courses, units, and daily lessons.
  • Examines the most common lesson plan models and discusses adaptations and variations appropriate by grade and subject area.
  • Explores approaches for differentiating instruction to help all students achieve, along with tips for making progress necessary to achieve academic goals for the year.
  • Includes sample lesson plans and tips for handling common challenges, such as unexpected changes in daily schedules, interruptions, lessons that take less or more time than expected, maintaining student engagement during transition times, and enhancing student learning when substitute teachers take charge.

Session 5 - Assembling Your Crew: Beginning the First Days of Teaching

  • Examines the critical role that schools play in twenty-first century communities and provides strategies for taking approaches that build upon strengths and minimize challenges inherent in local school and community cultures.
  • Provides strategies and concrete examples of ways to build positive relationships with administrators, mentors, colleagues, support staff, and community members.
  • Emphasizes the importance of communicating and teaming with parents to help students achieve their potential with specific suggestions for handling conferences and resolving conflicts among parents, students, and teachers.

Session 6 - Staying the Course: Promoting Success for all Students

  • Bridges the gap between developing and consistently implementing classroom policies.
  • Relays common mistakes new teachers make in handling classroom management and details approaches for overcoming them.
  • Provides specific, grade-appropriate direction for addressing the most common disruptive student behaviors.
  • Introduces time-tested actions for handling students who fail to respond to traditional classroom management efforts.
  • Emphasizes the importance of and provides suggestions for helping every student realize his or her potential, with special attention to working with students with exceptionalities, students from diverse backgrounds, and students with advanced academic abilities.
  • Provides a system for planning and implementing questioning techniques that provide quick, accurate feedback about student comprehension.
  • Details an approach for teaching students how to set, pursue, and achieve realistic, yet challenging goals for their success in school and in life.
  • Suggests assessment strategies that provide accurate feedback on students’ progress and reduce anxiety and other factors that hinder teachers’ abilities to evaluate students’ achievement.

Session 7 - Weathering Storms: Teaching Academic Survival Skills

  • Provides strategies for improving students’ reading skills and comprehension.
  • Introduces a process for conducting efficient and effective research.
  • Provides techniques and activities to sharpen students’ abilities to solve problems and think critically.
  • Introduces study strategies for different types of learners.
  • Explores a step-by-step process for teaching students to plan, write, and revise written assignments.
  • Relates approaches for designing and reviewing results of a variety of student assessments.
  • Examines common roadblocks that prevent students from speaking effectively in front of their peers, along with exercises and strategies for overcoming those roadblocks.

Session 8 - Building Student Character

  • Demonstrates the power of viewing character development as a skill-building endeavor.
  • Examines the critical role of self-respect in reaching students who typically fail in educational environments and highlights several common dangers associated with efforts that focus exclusively on building students’ self-esteem.
  • Provides sample activities that transform typical scenarios for students’ academic failure into experiences that convince students they have the capacity to succeed.
  • Introduces a system for using typical academic and physical skill-development techniques to teach student character, providing applications specific to students at all grade levels.

Session 9 - Reflection and Inspiration: Living Life as a Professional Educator

  • Focuses teachers on their responsibilities regarding the performance evaluation process.
  • Demonstrates methods for collecting information about teachers’ teaching practices, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, and setting goals for improvement.
  • Provides tips for gathering valuable insights from observing colleagues.
  • Explores options for continuing professional development that meet certification requirements, increase salaries, and enhance teaching effectiveness.
  • Identifies the importance of becoming involved in professional service both inside and outside the school.


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WELCOME!

by James Kestner -

Welcome to the New Teacher Bootcamp! Click on the session you'd like to begin. You. will need to register before you may log in. Enjoy!

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