Classroom Environment

My philosophy on classroom management first and foremost begins with a strong classroom community. What I mean by community is a collaborative environment where relationships are built and maintained, where students motivate and . Establishing a relationship with my students is key to being able to understand each other; to understand why and anticipate how a student may react to some occurrence in the classroom.

I believe that preventative measures should always be taken before reactivity. The year should always start with a class-generated list of community norms, expectations, or guidelines rather than rules. “Rules” suggests a strict and authoritarian-built structure that excludes students and punishes them. When students are involved in the prevention process, they have a better understanding of how the classroom should and will be conducted because they helped to create the framework for it. In both reactive and preventative measures, every situation should be approached from a place of care, and that should be made known to the students. If the goal is to problem solve with a student to correct their behavior, the intention should be geared towards growth and contributing to a positive learning community. 

  I believe in building a culturally responsive classroom where personal bias is acknowledged and consequently avoided. Not all approaches, content, or behaviors will be commonly accepted or agreed upon by each member of the classroom. This is why establishing a culture of mutual respect is perhaps the most important aspect of classroom management. Encouraging respect among classmates creates an atmosphere of trust that will pave the way for greater and stronger collaboration and safe risk-taking. Setting the precedent for mutual respect between teacher and student gives students a sense of agency in being viewed as an equal individual and lessens the possibility of disciplinary issues.

Overall, I believe that the classroom environment should be entirely uplifting, focused on accountability, reinforcement, and achievement of success rather than punishment and an emphasis on failures.

This video demonstrates the collaborative and trustworthy classroom environment that was facilitated, recorded over Zoom. In this lesson, students were practicing their close-reading skills by writing their own responses and then sharing them with their peers. Where I am silent and looking at the screen, I am checking for chat messages and reaction buttons from students. Though it is not captured in the recording, students leave reaction buttons (hearts, thumbs ups, smiley faces, etc.) as they exit the virtual classroom.