Moving Beyond Classroom Management

 

Creating an open classroom environment is incredibly important to me and has been a focus of my teacher education throughout this program, it was the focus of my inquiry project and is something that I believe is crucial to being a teacher.  I believe that Education should be focused on developing the social abilities of the students through the use group work and peer teaching as well as teacher run activities that appeal to as many modalities as possible. The focus on social abilities is because of how effective discussing or teaching someone about a topic is in developing a full understanding of it. The other major part of pedagogy that I have discovered is a focus on critical thinking and inquiry to allow the students to attack big questions and better understand the topics they study. Allowing students to direct their own learning more allows them to explore things that they are interested in while still sticking to the PLOs of the curriculum.

I believe that the creation of a social atmosphere within the classroom can greatly improve the learning environment and can help the teacher get their point across through the use of group discussion. I believe this is so important because if during the lecture you are unable to get all the information you intended to all of the students a group discussion can help fill in those gaps and allow the students to understand the information more fully. Discussion can also help bring new questions out in student and allow them to find a different angle on a topic that may have been neglected by the instructor making the teacher more accountable which in turn makes it a much healthier classroom environment. Through the use of more kinesthetic activities I think there is potential to have a much more involved classroom. Having the students physically interacting with the material greatly improves the learning atmosphere in the class and better addresses the material in most cases.

Based on the readings I have learned a lot about how to properly interact with students to create a positive community within the school. According to Greene and Mitcham community in the classroom can not only foster intrinsic motivation but can help create a school wide community that causes students to care more deeply about their class.  (Greene and Mitcham 2012) Having students that are attached to the teacher can also help create this style of environment. When they look up to and care about their teacher and that feeling is reciprocated then it can create a very positive classroom environment. (Bergin and Bergin 2009) By using these reading along with the reading on behaviour I have learned a lot about creating a classroom environment that can help people learn and grow as students without oppressing them with classroom management. (Gossen 2011) These three reading have helped guide me in my development of how I want to run my classroom. I am looking forward to implementing these strategies into my practice.

I plan on implementing these ideas into my classroom in order to create a safe environment where students feel safe to learn and push themselves. I would like to be a role model for my students in order to build strong relationships with them while listening to them to make sure the student is feeling cared for and involved. (Bergin and Bergin 2009) By using this in combination with allowing the students agency in the class will help solve many problems in the classroom and ensure that the students are able to participate in SEL without feeling overly vulnerable.  All of these ideas allow for a positive environment and will help me with running my class smoothly and helping students cope with the difficult trials and tribulations of being a teenager.

A situation that may come up is seeing students bullying in the classroom. One instance that I witnessed was a student not being allowed to sit with another group of students because he was too “weird”. This situation is one that can be helped by using the SEL techniques that have been mentioned earlier on in this paper. The student will feel very alone in a class like this and will not feel safe to express their opinions or open themselves up at all. Because of this they will struggle much more in class and will not be as successful in their learning as they could be. There are multiple solutions to a problem such as this and I will outline two possible ones in this paper.

I would most likely want to address this issue by sitting down with the students who are bullying and ask them to explain why they think it is appropriate to treat another student in this manner. I will be using I phrases to make them think more deeply about their actions and to ensure that I am not attacking them. I would also ensure that the student being bullied is addressed after with me in private. I would want to know how they are feeling and help them cope with the problems they are going through by helping them come up with solutions. I believe that this one on one approach is the most effective way of addressing the issue and I think it can help build a much closer bond between you and the students that way.

The second solution I have is to address the class as a whole and assign a seating plan. I would then have the student play some ice breakers with the new students around them in order to get to know each other better. I would point out that I am doing this because there seems to be some problems in the class and that I want the class to be a safe community were all members are respected equally. I will ensure that the students are treating each other well during these exercises and will hope that by getting to know each other better and finding some common ground, they will be less likely to pick on each other and the class as a whole will have more respect and community.