ACTIVITY TWO:
The key to creating a safer climate in a school or classroom is by understanding what students bring to school with them in terms of home life, friends, troubles, etc. Sometimes we forget that kids have a lot more difficult of a time “leaving the baggage at the door” to focus completely on school.
Not having a relationship with certain kids can literally cancel out all the content and effort placed into them. If you do not care about them, they do not care about learning the material taught by you.
90% of problems between students and teachers, as well as students and other peers, are over miscommunications or misconceptions.
It was surprising that students could actually handle being placed in circles and saw them as a form of relaxation through talking out their emotions and problems.
Simply punishing students for breaking a rule makes it more difficult for students to internalize why their actions were wrong and that they should care about the harm they caused.
QUESTIONS: How do you get a student to actually participate if they are just not having it with the restorative circle?
How can you completely change the climate or attitude of a classroom with such limited instructional time and therefore limited to no time for restorative circles?
Based on our readings and class discussion, how will you create a learning environment that is conducive to learning?
I think that the organization of the classroom to be goal-oriented is important. Simply arranging items to be in certain, and strategic, places can help maintain a more relaxed and structured environment. When I began teaching last fall, I arranged the desk in the old-school straight rows. The teacher before me had a very odd arrangement that I felt, at the time, added stress and confusion to the classroom. I think that my design now helps me to walk the rows and get to everyone. However, I do feel a different design, like a U-shape, would benefit the classroom more in gearing it toward a community and allowing me to better make sure everyone feels included and engaged at all times.
I think that the organization of the classroom to be goal-oriented is important. Simply arranging items to be in certain, and strategic, places can help maintain a more relaxed and structured environment. When I began teaching last fall, I arranged the desk in the old-school straight rows. The teacher before me had a very odd arrangement that I felt, at the time, added stress and confusion to the classroom. I think that my design now helps me to walk the rows and get to everyone. However, I do feel a different design, like a U-shape, would benefit the classroom more in gearing it toward a community and allowing me to better make sure everyone feels included and engaged at all times.
I agree with your question about changing the classroom climate, it seems as if it would be very hard to go from chaos to everyone agreeing in no time. How would you keep the chaos under control, while conforming the circle discussion?
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your statement about making a child feel important. Unfortunately so often in classrooms we see children, who just feel out of place and do not care what is going on. Unfortunately we as teachers have so much going on that at times we need to just sit down, and regroup with our children so that everyone feels reconnected with the activity.
My question to your first key point is when dealing with younger children in the classroom, how do we know about all those factors if there is not a lot of contact with parents and if the children are to scared to say anything about their lives outside of school?
I'm glad you brought up "leaving their baggage at the door." It's almost impossible to do at any age. My parents divorced when I was entering 9th grade, and although I didn't speak about it, it's all I thought about. This made me quite shy. Not because I didn't want to talk to anyone, but because I didn't think anyone else could relate or would understand. Freeing your chest of emotional baggage would allow for more room to learn and relate to peers. If we can help our students do this, we have done a big part of our job.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the "baggage" that students bring with them to school. There is also the "baggage" that comes from how a student is treated by their peers in school such as being bullied. The recognition of bullying in schools has become an important topic in schools over the past five years and trying to create a plan for intervention is needed but there's still much to learn on this topic.
ReplyDeleteI like that you bring up the fact that this will take time...and teachers really don't have much time considering all the pressure they are under to teach everything in the curriculum. Most of the time teachers have to nip behaviors in the bud quickly and continue teaching. If that doesn't work, the student is sent to administration. This may have to be the responsibility of the administration to implement.
ReplyDelete