Classroom: Physical Space
After having been exposed to several Reggio inspired classrooms and experiencing first hand the calmness of an uncluttered space, I ensure that my classroom is aesthetically pleasing, organized and calming.
Classroom: Expectations
Expectations need to be clearly voiced with well defined, consistent consequences. I 
spend time developing healthy relationships with the individual students and integrate activities that encourage the development of community. Building trust takes time and consistency. Purposeful social-emotional lesson plans help to teach the vocabulary and brain science of emotions. I use the language of care in my classroom: I take care of myself; I take care of others; I take care of this space.
An aspect of taking care of our space, is being responsible for the end of day cleaning and organizing. With my practicum class, I had the students brainstorm about what this would look like. They decided that it would be best to create teams and that each team would be responsible for a task.
I would like to implement a daily “exit slip” where each student upon finishing their responsibility will come and share with me a personal application of something learned today to help them create meaningful connections to their life outside of school.
Parents
Having been a parent to three children going through school, I value communication between teachers and parents. I feel it is important to validate parents, build trust, and keep them informed. I will approach this in several ways:
- When there is a concern, I will not wait. There is nothing worse than finding out at the end of the term that your child has been falling behind or not bringing their shoes for gym class, or not completing their work. A quick email followed by a quick meeting at the parent’s earliest convenience can bring about resolution and create a collaborative approach to finding solutions in the best interest of the child. A quick communication like this can also bring to the forefront issues in the home life that could be affecting school life.
- Meeting with parents at the beginning of the school year to explain the expectations of the year and my philosophy and pedagogy.
- I will set up a blog where parents can see what their children are doing, any particular assignments, and always “dinner table discussion question”. So often parents don’t know what questions to ask in order to be involved in their child’s learning. “What did you do today in school?” brings a curt “Nothing”. I would love to offer this to parents. They can choose to use them or not.