Creating Positive Classroom Climate: 30 Practical Strategies for All School Contexts(Building Your Teaching Toolbox)

Creating Positive Classroom Climate: 30 Practical Teaching Strategies for All School Contexts is designed for all K-12 educators, pre-service teachers, and teacher preparation faculty. We wrote this book to provide readers with accessible tools that can help them create and maintain an optimal classroom climate. Reading this book is like being in the room with 30 teacher mentors from different grade-levels and school settings who are sharing strategies for building and maintaining a positive classroom climate. Discover step-by-step breakdowns of how to implement each strategy as well as professional reflections from contributors representing two different grade-levels and a range of suburban and urban settings from all over the globe. Education students and novice teachers will learn from the in-depth descriptions of how to implement each strategy. Veteran teachers will be inspired by contributing teachers’ professional reflection regarding why and how they utilize each strategy. Readers in ALL school contexts will benefit from narrative descriptions of each strategy in action, which bring to life the ways that the strategies have made an impact on student learning and teacher development. The adaptations modeled throughout the book, based on students’ and schools’ assets and needs, help readers to think about how to make each strategy a good fit for their unique classroom. If you are looking for practical ideas from the field, look no further - this is a book designed to build your teaching toolbox with classroom climate strategies that you will use for years to come.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Highlights from Adaptable Teaching Strategy 1: Group Agreements Strategy 2: Establishing Routines Strategy 3: Positive Affirmations Strategy 4: Failing Forward Strategy 5: Critical Feedback Surveys Chapter 2: Getting Started Strategy 6: Room Setup Strategy 7: Getting to Know Students Strategy 8: Team Building Games Chapter 3: Routines Strategy 9: Classroom Jobs Strategy 10: Check-Ins Strategy 11: Student Voice to Start Class Strategy 12: Working the Room Strategy 13: Brain and Body Breaks Strategy 14: Mindfulness Strategy 15: Spotlighting Students Chapter 4: Supporting a Positive, Productive Climate Strategy 16: Building Positive Teacher-Student Relationships and Trust Strategy 17: Building Positive Peer-to-Peer Relationships and Trust Strategy 18: Guiding Students to Share Their Thinking and Feelings Strategy 19: Connecting Through Current Events Strategy 20: Supporting Student-Led Learning Chapter 5: 10 Bonus Strategies Conclusion

About the Author :
Jonathan Ryan Davis is an associate professor at The College of New Jersey where he coordinates the urban secondary education program. Jonathan is a former high school social studies teacher, cooperating teacher, and instructional coach who taught in northern Kentucky and New York City. Maureen Connolly is an associate professor at The College of New Jersey where she coordinates the secondary education program. Maureen is a former service learning coordinator and high school English teacher who taught for 15 years at Mineola High School.

Review :
It is all about classroom climate! The foundation of effective teaching is knowing that teaching is a human endeavor requiring deliberate practices to develop a classroom climate supporting the unique needs of every student. Now more than ever, as teachers move past the challenges created from Covid-19, developing classroom climates that support the needs of students is even more paramount to their success. While teachers have this supporting climate mindset, they often lack the strategies they need. Creating Positive ClassroomClimate is timely and provides examples of successful practices from teachers around the world on how to build positive climates in diverse settings. Teachers are introduced to strategies for classroom startup, developing critical relationships that build trust, establishing essential routines, and approaches to ensure ongoing support of a positive climate in their classrooms. Simply a great resource for all teachers! Creating Positive Classroom Climate, offers a set of strategies and heuristics for new teachers, as well as affirmations and reminders for veterans that are applicable at all developmental levels. This book unlocks practical methods and tools that provide concrete examples of pedagogy and instructional styles that have been proven effective in various school settings, focusing on what truly works in schools to improve learning. This is a wonderfully thorough and explicit handbook! It’s a quick and easy read, and you will find there are strategies for every age level which are easy to implement in your classroom right away. It is truly an amazing resource for all teachers. Each chapter is thoughtfully designed to grow a teacher’s repertoire of strategies for building classroom community on multiple levels, and to support learners across all backgrounds. This book is a substantial guide for any teacher - from the novice to the master! I would highly recommend this book to educators at all levels and look forward to putting these strategies into action! I will definitely keep Creating a Positive Classroom Climate in my desk drawer for quick reference and ideas. Now more than ever before, it is clear that educators have to be flexible and ready for anything. Creating Positive Classroom Climates is timely and relevant, offering a plethora of tools and strategies which are applicable to every classroom. It is the book teachers need to rethink and restructure what learning can look like, and it is written by teachers for teachers. If you've ever been afraid to try something new or to re-envision what learning can look like in your classroom, this is the book for you! Creating Positive Classroom Climate is a practical and comprehensive book that benefits all educators. The book supports both the novice teacher and the reflective educator at any stage or level of their career. The area of culture and climate is at the foundation of good teaching. When I meet with teachers, I often ask, ‘What is in YOUR toolbox?’ If there is any question or doubt, this essential read will poignantly help them find and utilize the strategies, instructional skills, and pedagogically sound techniques to develop and maintain a positive classroom climate climate in the classroom. As a former teacher, reading coach, vice principal, a principal coach, and as a sitting principal, I believe this book willhelp lead to robust conversations about teaching and learning. At a time when our students have more non-academic needs than ever before, it is critical that every educator has tools to support their students (and themselves). In this book, Maureen and Jonathan lay out exactly what to consider when determining how to support students and strategies to meet them where they are, all through the lens of research involving teachers in diverse settings. What a gift! Dive in, implement, and watch the magic happen.