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 your classroom is the first step to creating a lasting school community that will be supportive, engaging and empathetic. A classroom which is 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 will explore culturally relevant pedagogy, as a way to infuse the lived experiences of your students, to create a highly effective learning community. As well, we will incorporate social justice techniques to create a classroom that values learning throughout the school year.  We will go from foundational theories to field practice in order to understand how research is applied. We will then transition into learning how building relationships extends from the classroom to the school community, and explore “who we are” and what are our roles as educators. Course 2: This course will introduce 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. We will focus on how to meet the academic needs of specific populations of children including students with disabilities, English language learners, and gifted learners.  This course will introduce participants to different learning styles, diverse teaching methods and various ways to differentiate instruction to all levels of learners. We will begin by learning state standards, and how they influence instructional planning. We will transition into designing 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.  With reflection and pause, we know that at times we must assess correctly. In this course, we will explore 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. We must ensure we are actually assessing what we previously taught, and that we use the proper metrics. Assessments are more than just a formal summative standardized exam or scantron quiz. Many assessments come in the form of daily informal actions we take in the classroom to assess on the spot, which guides us to adjust instructional outcomes in order for all students to meet the class objectives. Other assessments will ensure unit integrity by assessing towards the end of the unit. Daily assessments come in various forms and are needed to guide instruction. Our focus for this course is learning varied tracking techniques, which will allow participants to use assessment results to quantify student success, develop highly effective lesson plans, and guide their daily instruction.