RESPONSIVE CLASSROOM©
BES utilizes an approach to community that focuses on strengthening social, emotional, and academic competencies: Responsive Classroom (RC). Responsive Classroom believes, among other things, that:
 the social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum, how children learn is as important as what they learn, and to be successful academically and socially, children need a set of social skills: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
Each teacher implements Responsive Classroom through several classroom practices. These may include:
- Morning Meeting: where the class gathers as a whole to welcome each other, share, and prepare for the day.
- Rule Creation: establishing clear expectations for behavior.
- Interactive Modeling: teaching children to notice and internalize expected behaviors.
- Positive Teacher Language: using words and tone to promote student's active learning, sense of belonging, and self-discipline.
- Logical Consequences: directly related to the misbehavior and designed to be short in duration, achievable, and a learning experience.
- Guided Discovery: introducing materials or processes using a format that encourages independence, creativity and responsibility.
- Academic Choice: permitting teacher-structured choices for students.
- Classroom Organization: encouraging children to be independent, cooperative, and productive via the manner in which the room is organized.
- Working with Families: creating ways to hear parents' ideas and concerns, sharing with them their child's experiences and the school's approaches, and working together to achieve common goals
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