Before setting up my classroom in my first year of teaching, I was advised to develop a positive classroom culture in my classes. This made complete sense to me as an end goal, but still left me with the question of “how?” Throughout my first year, and into my second year, I have still struggled with this question of how. As a ninth grade teacher, I find that many of my students enter the classroom in the fall with their own set attitudes, behaviors, and habits, both positive and negative. I must shape all of these to fit in with what I had envisioned as a positive classroom. But how?
Baltimore City Public Schools have recently caught the attention of the country due to a few incidents of bullying which have gone too far. On Monday, Dr. Alonso released a statement addressing the issue of bullying. In it, he places the responsibility of addressing bullying on teachers, parents, and the community as a whole.
As a classroom teacher, I agree with his statement. Teachers only work with their students a certain number of hours in a day. When students leave the school building, they are also easily influenced by others they encounter, and the influences of the teachers do not necessarily follow the student. There is a need for the families and community to address the issue of bullying.
As I was told before my first year of teaching, I need to address bullying in the classroom and create a positive classroom environment. But I was never told how, and trust me, I struggled with this task. For new teachers, and even veteran teachers, I think it would be incredibly helpful to provide professional development about how to create this positive classroom culture. Strategies, examples, and modeling could be shared to provide teachers with an idea of where to begin. Because bullying is such an important thing to address, among other issues within a classroom, I think teachers need to be provided with a basic knowledge of how to develop classroom culture in order to better address these issues before they begin.
1 comment:
You certainly have a valid point. I have found that much of teaching is centered on being told a great idea but not told how to accomplish it. That has always frustrated me, but at the same time I can understand. It is to me the same as being told that students need to be invested in the course in order to do well. On the one hand, I'm thinking that of course that makes sense. On the other, I'm worried because I have no idea how to invest some students in the course. So I go to ask someone else for advice and come to find that they have this brilliant strategy that works. The key, though, is that this strategy works for them. That doesn't mean it will work for me.
Education is full of good ideas...students need to feel safe in order to learn...don't work harder than the students...investment...management...etc...but the problems is that while we all agree that the ideas are good, we aren't all able to accomplish the same end result in the same way. I guess the irony is that when we want a magical training to teach us how to do something, we fail to realize that we ourselves sometimes need differentiation.
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