Monday, April 27, 2015

We are Family!


I've never had the opportunity to work in a non-inner city school and the differences in the student behavior are startling. The students are so well behaved in my field classroom. They are polite, they listen, and they follow the teacher’s directions quickly. Even the students who have emotional and mental issues all follow classroom procedures. However, when I had the opportunity to speak to the teacher, she told me about all she had done to build a positive community, or family as she likes to call it, in her classroom. She emphasized to the students to look out for their peers and instilled in them that they are all important, and the classroom would not run smoothly without them. I wonder if the student behavior has more to do with procedures being established early and a positive classroom environment being built where the students feel safe to learn and share and want to be an integral part of keeping their classroom running smoothly, then where the students come from and their upbringing, or is it a mixture of both? I would like to see how some of the other classes run in the school to see if most of the children behave like this or if this class is an anomaly. 

One thing I know for sure is that student behavior can negatively or positively effect a teacher’s ability to teach. In some of my other field placements, the teacher could barely make it through a lesson without multiple disruptions. When observing my cooperating teacher teach, I notice that she almost always makes it through all of her lessons without any disruptions. When the students are attentive and engaged, you get to do more as a teacher, and can do more activities that are hands on and fun. 

No comments:

Post a Comment