• Convenient, flexible, easy-to-use

  • Online learning that fits
    your schedule
  • Learn wherever and whenever you want
  • Easy-to-use learning platform guides you through the course



• We've helped educators at more than 15,000 schools

  • "This is how I'm going to get my continuing education credits from now on."

    - Wendy J. Cope, French Teacher, Lancaster Catholic High School, Lancaster, PA

  • "This course lives up to its promise. It is real and easy to implement. It's made a big difference in my teaching!"

    - Frank Martin, Principal, The Stevens School

  • "I absolutely love the class I am taking. I am taking it to improve my leadership skills. It's been great!"

    - Connie Cullip, Special Education Supervisor, Rudyard, MI EUPISD




• • "The Coursework is convenient and interesting! I definitely recommend the program."

    - Jennifer Desloges, 7th Grade English Teacher Plymouth Elementary, Plymouth, NH

  • "I am through about 4 lectures and am loving the ease and simplicity of how it all works! Everything is so easy to navigate."

    - LuAnn Funk, 2nd Grade Teacher, Case Avenue Elementary

Course 1035

The Safer School: Protecting Your Students, Your Faculty and Yourself

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Apply this towards your professional development requirements

Tuition: $575 for all 3 modules complete

Learn how to keep your school safe and secure from the nation’s most highly-recognized legal experts and educators. This convenient, online course to give you practical takeaways you can put in place immediately at your school. Presented in three sections, this new, online course covers policy and legal issues related to disciplining students for off-site conduct, sexual harassment between and among students and teachers, and the pervasive problems of cyberbullying, cell phone abuse, cheating and more.

What You'll Learn

How far can your school's discipline policy reach? With the increase of out-of-school activities, your responsibility for disciplining offsite misconduct is becoming more complex. What legal actions can you take? What crosses the line? You’ll learn:

• Out-of-School Discipline: What You Can and Can't Do
• Your legal authority for disciplining students in off-site incidents
• How to handle offsite situations: Bus stops, sporting events, field trips and more
• Legal Guidelines that Govern Off-Campus Discipline
• Where you can draw the line on out-of-school speech
• How to protect yourself from backlash and lawsuits
• Online incidents: Cyberbullying and other Web-Related Behavior
• When you can stop after-school cyberbullying
• How to communicate with parents about off-site behavior

What You'll Learn

When sexual harassment happens at your school, you have to know which actions to take that will protect the victim's rights and privacy, protect your school from legal liability, and maintain an environment where your students can learn and teachers and staff can work. In this section, you'll learn:

• The legal implications of sexual harassment all educators must know
• The most common forms of sexual harassment: What the statistics show
• How to spot and proactively combat harassment in your school
• Teacher or Student? Victim or harasser? The best ways to handle every scenario
• Court Cases Legal Update - Including U.S. Supreme Court Decisions
• Title IX and your potential liability
• How to legally handle third-party retaliation
• The thin line between sexual harassment or sexual assault
• What Schools Can and Cannot Do
• The grey areas and snap decisions that can come back to haunt you
• FERPA restrictions: What you can and cannot share with third parties
• The critical steps you must take before you begin an investigation

What You'll Learn

Incidents of technology misconduct and abuse, including cyberbullying and cell phones in the classroom, are widespread and often begin with students in elementary school. Understanding what students are doing, where and how they're doing it and the legal aspects of their conduct is critical to addressing and preventing this growing problem. In this section, you'll learn:

• The Realities of Cyberbullying and What You Can and Can't do
• How far you can go in regulating student speech online
• The growing abuses of social networking sites and what you can do about it
• The best practices for combating cyber-cheating, plagiarism and other forms of misconduct
• How to respond to inappropriate or offensive student-created Internet web sites
• Legal Update on Technology Abuse and Discipline
• How the courts are deciding technology abuse cases
• Fourth Amendment issues & due process requirements you need to know
• How to legally discipline technology misconduct in the classroom
• Other Internet Issues
• The statistics and trends: How the use and abuse of technology at your school compares
• How cyberpornography, privacy and the liability of ISPs impact your school
• The other forms of abuse and harassment are rampant today
• How to communicate with parents about dangerous online activities

The Virtual Teachers Lounge™

Check in with your peers and get answers to your questions – any time, 24/7. Taking this course will give you exclusive access to the thoughts, insights and experience of other educators and K-12 experts discussing your topics and giving you solutions and ideas for whatever is on your mind. In the Teachers' lounge, you can:

• Learn new, working strategies and solutions from other educators – live!
• Get answers to your toughest questions from top K-12 experts
• Discuss course topics with your peers and benefit from their experiences
• Share your success stories and best practices to benefit other teachers and administrators
• Get new perspectives, fresh ideas and guidance – whenever you need it.
• You can log whenever is most convenient for you, 24/7

All you have to do is sign up for this course, and you're in!

Connect with, hear from and get help from you peers.

Materials & Assessment

Lectures	Your lectures, delivered by one of the nation's leading, recognized experts on this topic, are presented in multiple parts to make listening and tracking your progress easier. You can listen to each as often as you like by playing it on your computer, downloading it to your iPod or other MP3 player, even burning it to CD. Listen wherever it is most convenient for you: at home, in your car; at the park; and whenever you like: before or after work, at night or on weekends. Many educators can complete a module in only a week.
Text Resources	Virtual text resources are downloadable and expand on the material covered in your lectures. They may include articles, web links to related materials and web sites, definitions of important terms and concepts, and a bibliography. All materials can be viewed on your computer or downloaded and printed.
Assessment	If you are taking this course for a Certificate of Completion, you do not need to complete the assessments and need only submit final projects. If you want to receive 3 Professional Development credits or 90 Professional Development hours, you must complete all the assessments and final projects.
Virtual Teachers Lounge	To gain Professional Development credits or hours for any of these three modules, you must participate in the Virtual teachers Lounge discussion for that module. If you are not seeking credits or hours, participation in the Lounge is not mandatory, but you are still welcome to connect with and share your thoughts, questions, insights and experience with your peers at any time.