Strong student-teacher relationships have been linked to many positive outcomes, including better behavior in classrooms and improvement in learning. This engaging experience supports the educators’ learning through the exploration and assessment of their current classroom practices that foster positive student-teacher relationships and/or classroom management practices. This session explores essential elements and identifies strategies that create positive classroom relationships between students and teachers, identifies strategies, and provides a working knowledge about the students we teach today. Using the positive student-teacher relationship learning, participants will build upon this idea to explore teacher assertiveness, rules, rituals and routines in their classrooms in order to implement an effective classroom management environment first day/first week of school. Opportunities in the session will invite teachers to change where needed and apply new thinking and strategies that will increase their effectiveness with classroom environment (Domain 2).