Bullyproofing the Elementary Classroom: Responsive Classroom Offers Teachers New Workshop

TURNERS FALLS, Mass., Feb. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --Teachers can learn how to prevent bullying behavior in their classrooms with the help of a new professional development workshop based on the practices and strategies of the Responsive Classroom® approach to teaching. The one-day Bullyproof Your Classroom workshop will be offered to the public for the first time this summer in: Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Charlotte, NC; and Avon, CT. Registration for this, and other Responsive Classroom workshops, is now open at their website.

The one-day workshop will introduce participants to current research on how to prevent bullying, practical strategies they can immediately use in their elementary classrooms, "gateway behaviors" to address before they become bullying behaviors, how to deal with bullying when it happens and, most important, how to create a classroom culture where bullying is unlikely to occur. The workshop is equally useful for Responsive Classroom veterans and those unfamiliar with the approach.

"When teachers know how to teach social-emotional skills along with academic content, they can create and maintain safe, caring, and joyful classrooms," says Caltha Crowe, the workshop's lead developer and a long-time Responsive Classroom teacher and consultant. "In those classrooms, kind behaviors flourish, mean behaviors wither, and children are free to concentrate on learning."

All participants in the workshop will receive a copy of Crowe's forthcoming book, How to Bullyproof Your Classroom, which is due out in June. Crowe is also the author of Sammy and His Behavior Problems: Stories and Strategies from a Teacher's Year and Solving Thorny Behavior Problems: How Teachers and Students Can Work Together.

"I'm really looking forward to sharing the ideas in this workshop and new book with teachers," Crowe says. "Teachers have an important opportunity—and an obligation—to curb bullying. Children spend many hours a day in school and the elementary school years are a period where adults can make a big difference."

About Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc. and the Responsive Classroom approach

Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc. (NEFC), a not-for-profit organization, was established in 1981 by elementary school educators who envisioned a way of teaching that would bring together academic and social learning throughout the school day. That way of teaching, called the Responsive Classroom® approach, is now being used in schools across the country. For more information, visit www.responsiveclassroom.org.

SOURCE Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc.