Before I post the question, try exploring or writing down this website as a PAARC resource. You (as the teacher) can prepare PAARC like questions using your curriculum to help better prepare students.
www.edcite.com
The articles/chapters we read for this week focused on the importance of classroom management and the environment of the classroom. Do you believe classrooms need rules and why? How important do you think the environment of your classroom is in relation to student learning? What type of classroom culture would you like for your future classroom? One that fits the learning activities you have planned for your students or will you let your classroom take on a character of its own?
What a great resource! Thanks for sharing it with us.
ReplyDeleteAs for classroom culture, this is the sort of thing we talked about in Human Relations and Conflict Resolution. We had to create a classroom management plan based on these factors; I approached mine from several standpoints, balancing elements of child and adolescent development with my student's out-of-school environments and of course the curriculum.
As for the classroom environment, this sums up my view pretty well (from my philosophy of education and classroom management strategy):
"Comprehensive classroom management also involves a series of contracts between adults and children. These contracts must ensure responsibility and freedom to high-performing students, achievement and support to low-achieving students, and loyalty and commitment to everyone in the school environment."
I want a classroom in which all students feel comfortable expressing themselves to the class, and sharing their concerns with me. Only once students are comfortable in a place will they be able to maximize their learning, so I hope to have a classroom where all students can feel respected and deserving of attention and effort.
This kind of class takes effort to mold, so explicit strategies must be employed in the first few months of the year to establish that trust. A laissez-faire method of classroom management will only reinforce students' prejudices, discomfort, or misbehavior. As a teacher, it is my duty to clearly establish high expectations for my students in all areas - academic, social, etc.
I agree with Melanie 100% that ideally I want a classroom in which all students feel comfortable and exactly what she said, "This kind of class takes effort to mold, so explicit strategies must be employed in the first few months of the year to establish that trust. A laissez-faire method of classroom management will only reinforce students' prejudices, discomfort, or misbehavior. As a teacher, it is my duty to clearly establish high expectations for my students in all areas - academic, social, etc" I also completely agree with. I feel that it is not only a student's job to try and be open-minded and inclusive but first and foremost the teacher's responsibility to set early on that standard of consideration within the classroom. Setting rules that apply to all things, such as general respect issues etc are crucial to classroom environment. Reading also made me think of this post on class management I saw on he site Tumblr. A teacher said that one of their classroom rules was STOP means STOP and NO means NO. I feel like while it seems very simple, it can relate to all things and make students consider their actions without focusing too much attention on making complex and blatantly specific rules such as "this classroom is a judgement-free zone" which is explicit but can not always be carried out as a direct rule. For instance, if NO means NO, then the teacher can use this rule to tell a student not to touch someone who doesn't want to be touched. STOP means STOP can be used to enforce silence while one speaker has the floor, it can also be used to address issues of bullying or if a student feels uncomfortable in a certain topic they can say STOP to address the issue. If a student is even feeling picked on or bullied the teacher can enforce the punishment of someone harassing another student under this rule. I think rules are crucial to classroom environment and management as well as consider 'over-arching' rules to be good ways to establish comfortable environments
ReplyDeleteMy number one rule in a classroom would be Professor Jackson's golden rule: "Respect all voices and choices." I would take the first or second day of class to discuss with the students what this means, which is that students may disagree with another student's viewpoint or perspective but not before the student has had an ample chance to explain their viewpoint and/ or perspective. That's one example. Another would be to respect that one students would rather read "Twilight" instead of "Divergent." Students should understand that most of their classmate's choices won't directly impact their own choices. In other words, "Johnny, let Suzy read Twilight and form her own opinion about it and you enjoy Divergent. You can have a discussion about it but remember to disagree the book and not Suzy." Role-playing is always a good way to instill these rules and put them to practice.
ReplyDeleteI'm also okay with a (I'll say partial) laissez-faire situation. I would like to experiment with the idea of a democratic classroom and have students create a list of five classroom rules that they agree on. The five rules, which would be bulleted rather than numbered, will be written on poster paper with the Golden Rule at the top and then hung up in the classroom where all can see it. I think students are more likely to follow a set of rules if they had some say in the creation of those rules. The reason I think bulleting the rules would be better is because I think numbering them gives one rule more weight than the other (there's something about Rule #1 haveing more authority than Rule #2). And the reason I chose five rules as opposed to ten or more is because it challenges students to really consider what's most important (much like how our Pecha Kucha challenged us to really prioritize our values as teachers by limiting it to ten). Also, students are more likely to remember five rules than ten or fifteen.