Establishing a Positive Classroom Climate

M4U1A3: Establishing a Positive Classroom Climate

Jana Parkin

Let me introduce myself and my biases. I am a white female born into a traditional nuclear family in Salt Lake City, Utah. My family was in the lower working class, my father had to pawn things to pay the bills sometimes. My mother didn’t work outside the home, she raised 4 children and has lower mental abilities. My brother, 2 years younger than me, also has severe mental abilities. I worked hard at Universty, become the first granddaughter to ever graduate. I am very proud of my bachelor's degree in Ornamental Horticulture. I love the biological world around me. Teaching is a natural extension of my personality as I convey to others my inner fascination with scientific phenomena.
I am now living in Europe and experiencing life as an immigrant surrounded by a foreign language. My German is slowly improving. In my German course, I became friends with people from completely different religions and cultures than my own. Some Muslim from Tunisia and Turkey, some from Asia, some from India with their beautiful Saree’s. I had never been around such diversity before and I love it. I have loved living in a location where there are so many languages and customs, all within a short driving distance. I can travel 1 hour and be submerged in 3 different languages and customs, drive a little further and experience even more. One out of four people here in Switzerland is a foreigner like me.
In my classroom l I expect plenty of diversity. I look forward to becoming more familiar with the cultures and experiences of my students and their families. The Critical Practices for Anti-bias Education policy from teachperspectives.org had some incredibly sound advice to creating an unbiased and positive classroom environment for all of my diverse students. It stresses the importance that all students and the teacher have opportunities to learn from one another’s varied experiences and perspectives. The first strategy is to encourage students to reflect through writing on their own stories, hopes, concerns, strengths and life circumstances told at a level that invites appropriate student sharing. Safety for sharing life experiences will be established by discussing principles of engagement as a class and as a class agreeing on what we can do to create a positive experience for all to feel comfortable in. Active listening skills will be discussed and modeled. Not all students will feel comfortable with verbal expression, alternative options include written response, artistic response, and involvement in small groups. Creating a safe climate takes time and work. Throughout the year as a class, we will focus on social-emotional skills, bullying prevention and intervention, meaningful conflict resolution, teaching students to challenge bias and exclusion, and incorporating student-generated discipline policies to name just a few.
Social-emotional skills include encouraging self-awareness, self-management (response to various situations), social awareness (empathy for all types of people), relationship skills (working cooperatively and resolving conflicts), and responsible decision making (being aware of consequences) (Edutopia, 2013). As the students and I work through these various skills we can add to our classroom contract of norms and behaviors that the students help create at the beginning of the school year.
Also at the beginning of the school year, our classroom policies on anti-bullying will be discussed and modeled by the students. Various methods for teaching this include watching videos on the topic followed by a Fish Bowl discussion (where some students discuss while the others listen then switch), reflective writing, creating a timeline or history of hate crimes (Not, 2011), and teaching our anti-bullying ideas to other classes (Teaching, 2011). The Be an Ally not a Bystander message will be a continual theme throughout the year.
Included in our classroom contract of norms and behavior expectations will be a section on Restorative Justice (Ashley, n.d.). Students will be challenged to explore what this is and to give feedback on how we can best incorporate these ideas into our classroom policies.
In addition to these methods, classroom layout will encourage group discussion and collaboration by the arrangement of the desks into groups. Also, attention to the message conveyed by the images on the walls will encourage diversity, equity, and student empowerment. Various culture’s scientists will be proudly displayed in my science classroom along with celebrating important dates such as birthdays or discoveries of these scientists from around the globe.
As a teacher, I will utilize the 8 steps action steps that communicate an appropriate level of concern and cooperation towards my students (Marzano, 2007). These include: 

1. Know something about each student. Giving students who feel particularly alienated some extra attention and getting to know a couple of students better each day. 
2. Engage in behaviors that indicate affection for each student. Meeting students at the door as they come into class each day, making an attempt to greet them by name. 
3. Bring student interests into the content and personalize learning activities. An example would be to ask students to identify something they are interested in that has the same relationship as the topic of the day. 
4. Engage in physical behaviors that communicate interest in students. Smile at students at appropriate times, when appropriate place a hand on a student’s shoulder as a form of encouragement. 
5. Use humor. Laugh at myself and with my students through playful banter and use of joke books.
6. Consistently enforce positive and negative consequences establishing clear learning goals. I will be very clear about the behavior I expect. 
7. Project a sense of emotional objectivity. I will reframe student’s negative behavior to not take them so personally. 
8. Maintain a cool exterior. I will have a facial expression that is either neutral or positive and speak directly to the offending student in a calm and respectful tone.

By utilizing these techniques I hope to create an environment of caring and concern both by the student’s towards each other and by myself. It is important to me that all students feel respected and valued in my classroom. Being proactive with high expectations and a clear plan of action will aid this learning process. I expect a learning curve as I begin my formal teaching experience. Learning from my mistakes, critiquing my own biases, and attending professional development workshops can also increase my abilities in creating an inclusive classroom. I also really liked the idea of having a Critical Colleague who will partner with me to observe one another’s classes with an eye towards bias (Teaching, 2014). I hope the enthusiasm I have towards science and the love I have for teaching will be expressed as I venture towards creating a positive classroom environment for my diverse students.

References

Ashley, Jessica and Burke, Kimberly (n.d.) Implementing restorative justice. Retrieved Nov

2016 from http://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/BARJ_Guide.pdf

Edutopia (May, 2013) 5 Keys to Successful Social and Emotional Learning. Retrieved Nov

2016 from https://www.edutopia.org/keys-social-emotional-learning-video

Marzano, Robert (2007) The Art and Science of Teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for

Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Not in Our Town (2011) Lesson Idea: “Students Take On Cyberbullying”. Retrieved

Nov 2016 from https://www.niot.org/nios/lesson/lesson-idea-%E2%80%9Cstudents-take-cyberbullying%E2%80%9D

Teaching Channel (Dec, 2011) Changing Attitudes Toward Bullying: Be An Ally. Retrieved

Nov 2016 from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/be-an-ally#video-

sidebar_tab_video-guide-tab

Teaching tolerance (2014) Critical Practices for Anti-bias Education. Retrieved Nov 2016

from

http://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/general/PDA%20Critical%20Practices_0.pdf