1) How I plan to move beyond Classroom Management
Describe why you would want to create a classroom environment that focuses on more than just classroom management

I hope to use classroom management strategies and ideas in my classroom to build the environments and relationships, but most importantly, the foundations of my teaching philosophy. Without classroom management, my teaching and lessons would mean nothing. However, I hope students to stand on this support and develop themselves as confident human beings capable of expressing and creating their roles outside and beyond school. This is where my teaching philosophy comes in. I want to create a learning environment where my students feel safe to experiment with their interests, try new skills and strategies, and fail. My purpose is to foster intrinsic motivation for students to learn and guide students towards their self-identity. In an environment where it is safe to try new things and safe, I want my students to develop goals that matter to them, make meaningful learning choices, and master their self-directed learning skills – the critical thinking, collaborative, integrative learning, and transfer skills that come in the self-directed learning package. I think it is important for my students to enjoy this process of learning and to reflect on their learning experience. I want my students to make learning a part of themselves, to be genuinely interested in learning. As someone who can express oneself freely, my students will know how to take advantage of their strengths and discover ways to improve weaknesses. Most importantly, I think it’s important for students to fully accept themselves and be fully confident in who they are and what they can become.

Eventually, I hope for my students to be able to recreate the environment that this course has taught me because that’s when they’ve truly graduated from my class. They will have taken their citizenship outside of class (Freiberg, 1996) and built their own communities.

2) My plan for creating and maintaining positive classroom environments that fit with my teaching philosophy.

Describe HOW you plan to create positive classroom environments. Include details on how you ideally plan to: create supportive and safe environments, build relationships, foster SEL, and prevent problems

I want to be able to create a classroom where students will not be afraid to make mistakes, ask questions, and voice their opinion. I want my students to feel that they’re part of the classroom experience and that they are capable of creating classroom space for them to learn. This is in line with my teaching philosophy in that I hope to promote environments where students can try new things, fail, discover their strengths and weaknesses, reflect on their learning style, and voice out how they would like to learn in the class that uses their unique learning abilities. To do this, they need to feel confidence and safe to fully express themselves. As learners wanting this voice, they can critically evaluate their learning environment, promote change in the classroom, and create a better learning space (Freiberg, 1996). Being leaders of their learning experience, I aim to foster intrinsic motivation and guiding students to value learning for the right reasons as mentioned in my teaching philosophy. I want my students to learn for the love of learning, not for the rewards or feeling the pressure of being punished if they don’t (Noddings, 2006). It will be my job to steer them in the right direction so they can take genuine ownership of their learning.

I hope achieve this by creating caring classroom communities and relationships with students, which will also help me prevent problems in the future. I will use the below strategies to help me develop this caring atmosphere in my classroom.

The most important thing I must do is to open up a space where students are not afraid to speak their problems and their discontentment. This is important because we’ll be able to discuss the problems together and find a solution before big problems occur down the road. For students to open up to sharing, they need to feel safe (Freiberg, 1996). Thus, I want to be able to open a dialogue with students on the first day and talk about classroom expectations. I hope to create a Magna Carta with my students where we discuss what we expect from each other, what I expect from them, what they expect from me as their teacher, and what they expect from themselves (Freiberg, 1996). I think this is important to set the tone so students have a voice on what their learning space is going to look like. We want to set high standards of behavior, but I don’t want to be the authoritarian in the classroom. Moreover, we’re not brainlessly writing down rules we think are important, but also critically thinking why these rules are important to us. I would open a discussion with my students to let them know that I want them to speak up to what ever rule, activity, or anything that we do in class that they’re not happy about. We would open a discussion where I would explain why I choose this rule and they can reason with me why they think it is wrong. If they can convince me why their way is right or better, I will respect their opinion and voice. If we come to the conclusion that I am right, we need respect the activity or rule I introduced. It is important to have an open mind and be open to disagreements, as teachers and for students. I would also tell them that making mistakes is absolutely fine. We all make mistakes, but we take responsibility of our mistakes and do something about it. When someone else makes a mistake, we need to understand what he or she is going through and at times help each other. The purpose of saying this is to create the tone of acceptance, trust, collaboration, and care for each other. In addition to verbalizing these values in the classroom, I plan to check in with my students in the beginning of class and ask them what they do that was interesting. I wouldn’t mind sharing my stories and experiences to build the connection and trust with students. A personal story can make me feel vulnerable but hopefully students will feel that they’re being trusted with this vulnerability and feel safe regardless of their own vulnerabilities (Freiberg, 1996; Cervone, 2014). With me starting this sharing, I plan to give my students a chance to share their stories through Science. There is an activity I plan to have my grade 9 students think of a physical or chemical change that they experienced recently and tell the story to the class or in a group. Afterwards, the group members have to guess or reason out which change was mentioned in the story. I plan to play instrumental music before and maybe during class time to enhance brain activity and thinking skills to help students concentrate. Music also has this unique ability to connect with certain students and can create a welcoming class atmosphere for students to feel safe. To build relationships with my students, I plan to involve myself in extra curricular activities that some of them might join such as the badminton team and the leadership club. If enough students are interested, we may start up a board gaming club. I enjoy creating puzzles and games so I may design a murder mystery event where other teachers, parents, and administers are involved with students. Creating time to bond with students and a network of support will greatly enhance the caring environment for my students (Hamre, 2006). Social games are a great way to involve students, play, and to learn about each other and bond – a good example of a social game that I used and that worked for students was Mafia or Werewolves. Since I will be interacting with my students, I may be able to find out what they’re interested in and incorporate those topics into my lessons. They may have a chance to explore their topic through Science lenses, which would help foster intrinsic motivation for students to learn (Hamre, 2006).

Through these strategies, I hope I would’ve created a safe and caring classroom where students will not be afraid to approach me with their problems before the problems occur. For this to happen, I must slowly develop the trust between all of us in the classroom.

3) Ideas to handle difficult situation – 1 difficult situation: how to address and how to prevent

My difficult situation that I anticipate could happen in my class is when a student (let’s say Kate) does not want to engage in group-work for a difficult problem. The problem would be a question that Kate needs to learn the content as a group before tackling the problem, which means the work will be very difficult for the student if she chooses to work alone. I know Kate does not get along with her peers and unfortunately my classes are mostly centered on collaboration.

According to my teaching philosophy, I want Kate to be forming these collaborative bonds independently out of learning curiosity. When Kate finishes my class at the end of the year, I won’t always be there to bridge her gaps with her peers. This doesn’t mean that I will leave Kate alone. I would move through the groups naturally; as I approach her, I would ask her why she’s alone. I don’t want her to feel that I’m singling her out by going to her directly. Given the worse situation when she is unable to mingle with any group, I would ask her to follow me to the corner of the room where her peers can’t hear our conversation and I can observe the class. I don’t want to ask her after class because this activity would be an important one that she’ll miss out on. In our conversation, I’d tell her what I am noticing and ask her if there’s anything she’d like to share with me. I’d share with her why I am intruding her space by asking this question: we have this difficult activity that will be very important for you to learn and I’m worried for your learning, especially if you can’t understand this material. If she has a problem, we can fix it together while I keep her issues safe and confidential with me. Hopefully, I can use dialogue to create a trusting bond between us to discuss the issue deeper. If she chooses to stay silent, I’d ask her if she’d like to take a breather from class with another peer. She can’t go alone but I’d give her space if she needs the space for now. There’s no point to force her to learn if she’s mentally distracted with something else. I would slowly try to get her to work with her peers. Maybe I can start her off with the peer who took her to the washroom and start them off on a simple task to get them started before giving them a harder task. I can invite Kate and her peer after school to my class if they’d like extra help on understanding the work. Slowly, I hope Kate can build the relationship he has and maybe allow herself to diversify when both her peer and herself need to work in a larger group. This will take time and I can offer her help on developing interpersonal skills with her peers. Since I made collaboration a part of my learning outcome, I might need to stress this to Kate. Given she has severe issues with interacting with others, that will be a separate problem I’d have to address differently. If she is having problems at home, she is welcome to share with me if she is comfortable or I would encourage her to speak with her counselor or a care worker she trusts.

Ideally, I’d combine my first method with a preventative measure. This would be creating a classroom of students who are open to discussion and accepting of others as mentioned in the previous question. During class time or the beginning of class the next day, I could address this issue to the class about collaboration and needing to include others in our learning. I wouldn’t single Kate out by addressing her name and I can even choose to check with her if mentioning this problem to the class would be something she’d be comfortable with. Hopefully, a class slowly fostering care for each other will allow Kate to be accepted into the group and experience learning like the other kids. If I have a class of caring students, Kate may have been included in a group in the first place. I think the main role for me is to create and engage in that constructive dialogue from the beginning. This is the collaboration that I’d like to see for my students.

 

 

References

Freiberg, H.J. (1996). “From Citizens to Citizens in the Classroom.” Educational       Leadership, 32-36.

 

Cervone, B. (2014). “Learning by Heart: The Power of Social-Emotional Learning in           Secondary Schools.” Executive Summary.

 

Noddings, N. (2006). “Handle with Care.” Everyday Ethics, 18-21.

 

Hamre, B.K., Pianta, R.C., Bear, G.G, Minke, K.M. (2006). “Student-Teacher   Relationships.” Children’s needs III: Development, prevention, and intervention,   59-71.