One thing that my classroom mentor emphasized since the first day of school is the importance of building a classroom community within each individual class as well as across all of the classes she teaches. Her main focus was to establish a supportive, positive space for students to enter each day. Because math can be a subject with very polarized opinions about it, my mentor took time on the first day to discuss that she understood this with her students. However, she relayed to them that she wanted to use this year as a time for students to put aside any negative feelings they may have towards math from prior experiences and to move forward this year with a more positive attitude. I think that by having this conversation from the start, the students were able to see how my classroom mentor genuinely cares about their experience in the class and how she wants them to be successful this year and in years to come in math.
Not only did my mentor focus on creating a positive environment for students to work in, but she wanted to emphasize the idea of student mindset. She felt it was very important to establish a community that is constantly working to put their best effort forward and work to improve their skills. Students were encouraged to always enter the classroom with a positive attitude and ready to learn each day, and they understood that they are able to take a break to get back on track if they feel they’re struggling to be positive. I think that bringing this conversation of attitude and work ethic into the classroom not only improves classroom culture and community, but it also enforces the expectations my mentor has for her students. All students know that they are expected to give 100% effort at all times, and it is their responsibility to try to meet this expectation each day. Because my mentor has taken time to establish themes of positivity in the community through expectations of each individual, I feel that my mentor has shown her students an ethic of care. By taking the time to create this space for her students, she has demonstrated some of the ways she is willing to support them within her classroom. I think demonstrating this care is what good student-teacher relationships should look like in schools. Being a supportive teacher does not mean that you are best friends with your students or that you are going easy on your students to scaffold their learning; in my opinion, a teacher who has supportive relationships with his or her students institutes high expectations for the students to achieve and is there as a resource in scaffolding their journey to meet these expectations. Creating a positive, safe, and challenging environment has seemed to create immense respect in the relationships between my classroom mentor and her students, and these types of relationships are something I want to try to emulate as a teacher in my own practice.
1 Comment
Sarah Poncz
10/1/2015 03:13:57 pm
Thank you for your thoughtful entry.
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Author20 something year old. Pittsburgh native. Pennsylvania explorer. Graduate student. Aspiring teacher. Archives
March 2016
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