I think the most repeated piece of advice I received while learning how to be a teacher was “don’t smile until November” (or December, or January, or ever!). If you know me, you’d know that not smiling is quite challenging for me, but at this statement’s heart is the idea that classroom management is vital to the success of both you and your students. I spent a large part of August preparing and reading a variety of ways to make sure I got this year off to a good start. Now that the school year was gotten started, the time I spent on this has paid off.
Last week I started a lesson by making a wall of happiness. Everyone gets two index cards to draw or write something that makes them happy (when someone's laugh is funnier than their joke, hugs, a cool breeze on a hot day at the athletic fields, etc.). Everyone shares one and tapes it to the wall, then repeat. We had many Netflix and food related answers but then answers like “being done with a stressful test” and “sitting on a Cape Cod beach” on a nice sunny day.
After everyone has shared the two items on the wall of happiness, we brainstormed on the board what makes you happy in class. Then we brainstormed things that can make class unhappy. Following that, I split the class into groups and had them come up with two scenes: the first scene is where everyone in the class is happy because class is going well; the second scene is where everyone in the class is not happy because class is not going well.
I think this particular exercise went very well because they have all been in great and not so great classes. It was also incredibly enlightening to see how they portrayed the teachers in both cases. It was a great reminder of a quote that one of our administrators shared with us:
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
― Haim G. Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers
The next class we made two columns on the board, and students finished the sentence “I want…” and “I fear…” as it pertains to this class (what do they want to achieve? what are they scared of?). After this, I asked the students to write down what they think everyone would need to agree to, to make the class work well. After they've had a few minutes, we shared their ideas and worked together to develop a class contract. We had some fairly typical responses like “be respectful” and “do your part,” but I loved the clauses like “we will not let our fear of failure get in the way of taking new risks.”
it’s so true that we learn from our students, because while I originally intended my beginning unit to establish class culture and climate, it was ultimately a great reminder to me that I, too, should be held to a set of standards. It makes me think of how Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath.
If teachers had one what would it say?