Classrooms Conducive to Learning

       The task of this post is to discover how I plan to create a classroom environment that is conducive to learning. The first thing that must be mentioned comes from this blog post which talks about the necessity of an environment conducive to learning. The article says that as teachers, the focus of the classroom should be to educate the students. When accepting this as your primary goal it becomes clear that having a classroom that makes this easier should be a component of any teachers lesson planning. If a teacher cannot provide this classroom I believe that learning becomes harder if not nearly impossible therefore this should be the first focus of a teacher, in my opinion.

      The question remains, how do you make a classroom to this specification? I believe the answer begins with an atmosphere that promotes both an appropriate relationship structure between the student and teacher and an atmosphere that promotes collaboration between the two. The first is necessary to have a structure that shows that the teacher is in charge and responsible for the instructing. It also requires that the student know that he/she is the student is in charge of learning and all that that entails. The second of the two ways to promote a descent atmosphere is to have an atmosphere of collaboration. This ensures that the student knows that the teacher is there to help them and that the teacher understands that the student and their learning is what comes first. The article also mentions something else that I think is important in this process. Teachers need to understand that teaching requires some collaboration with other teachers and should not be afraid to take advice and learn new things. I believe these things help to promote a atmosphere that leads to the best learning environment.

      As for the second aspect of this post, I am asked to deal with a classroom of seniors who are not interested in learning in my class. To deal with this problem I believe that I would ask all of my students to write a journal about what they intended to do once they left high school. I would then find a way to relate the information to them and try my hardest to convince them that this information was important to their lives and futures. The students have also formed cliques in the classroom. My intervention here would be to "assign" "random" groups that split up the cliques somewhat evenly across the class. These reading groups would be to facilitate discussion among the groups. The last problem posed in this case study finds three disruptive boys that do not seem to be able to be reached through normal interventions. I believe that the best way to deal with these boys would be to have a talk with them stressing how it makes people feel to interrupt in that manner. I would hope to relate their actions to something they can relate to in order to make their actions real and so the importance of behaving correctly. I believe that having this somewhat private talk would help the students not to feel single out and to save face as mentioned here. This also maintains me as the teacher in this relationship. I also read that I cannot let the students see that they got a rise out of me. I cannot be sure that this will work but I do hope that if faced with this situation this intervention plan would be beneficial.