Classroom Management Matters: The Social--Emotional Learning Approach Children Deserve

"We can do better, but expectation alone is not enough. We need answers and examples like the ones Gianna and Brook provide with great insight from research and practice and great compassion for teachers and students. My hope is that this book will become a touchstone for all of us."
-Carmen Farina, Chancellor of New York City Schools

"Positive, supportive relationships with children help them develop socially and emotionally and help you to effectively manage your classroom," writes Gianna Cassetta. She shows you an approach to creating that environment that can actually be planned for, taught, and supported from the first day of school-or anytime you want to reset your classroom community.

Gianna has been a teacher and leader, and the classroom management strategy she shares inClassroom Management Matters shifts you away from professionally draining rewards-and-consequences systems that threaten children rather than connect with them. Instead of tips and techniques Gianna presents a plan for explicitly teaching children how to be effective learners and accountable members of the classroom. You'll quickly learn to:

• know your students better and understand the causes of individuals' misbehavior
• assess children's development along a provided social-emotional continuum-just like any other skill you teach
• teach these self-management skills to support a positive classroom and academic growth
• set and maintain boundaries with students
• respond to disruption with effective teaching language.

With reflection questions, classroom examples, and summaries of supporting studies from researcher Brook Sawyer,Classroom Management Matters helps you be a learning leader in the classroom instead of an authority. "I'll show you detailed strategies that prevent and minimize your difficulties with students," writes Gianna, "so you can focus on constructive action that will have a lasting, positive impact."

Gianna is a former teacher, principal, coach, and district level leader. Her passion for the teaching and learning process, and her commitment to whole child-focused opportunities that are differentiated to meet the needs of each student, led her to cofound and lead public, charter conversion, and charter schools in Harlem, New York, and in Denver, Colorado. She is the author of several Heinemann books: Classroom Management Matters: The Social and Emotional Learning Approach That Children Deserve; No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices; and The Caring Teacher: Strategies for Working Through Our Own Difficulties with Students. Follow Gianna on Twitter @Gianna_Cassetta.

Brook Sawyer is coauthor of the new Heinemann title Classroom Management Matters as well as No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices, part of the Not This, But That series. Brook was a middle school language arts teacher and an elementary guidance counselor and is now an assistant professor in the College of Education at Lehigh University. Her research aims are interdisciplinary and center on promoting the development of young children who have disabilities or who are dual language learners (DLLs). Specifically, her work aims to support the development of preschoolers who are at risk for poor school performance by examining and enhancing the practices of teachers and teachers as well as by enhancing partnerships between educators and parents. She has published her work in numerous journals, such as Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Journal of Early Intervention, and Journal of Research in Reading. She has presented her work at national and international conferences.