Since the first day of school, my number one intention every day has been to keep my classroom a positive place to be. There have definitely been some hard days, but here we are seven weeks in and I do feel as though I have also had some extremely successful days. I have been committing to reflecting on positive moments frequently and trying to find ways to encourage more and more of them to happen. Here are some moments that felt really rich with community:
Having stated the positive, which is so important for having a great classroom culture, I will also describe a scenario about which I have room to grow. I love laughter in my classroom and as long as it doesn't delve into chaos, I'm okay with students making a few jokes here and there. However, occasionally the jokes can be made about other students, in a way that isn't positive. The kids don't mean it, but still, they'll say things like, "Gosh [so and so] you're so stupid, don't you know the answer is [xyz]?" I try to discourage these comments, but I don't catch every one of them. While reading this article, I was particularly struck by the section about redirecting negative language in the classroom no matter the intent of the student. It made me realize I need to be more on it when I hear students make comments like this, because I never know how the receiving party is actually taking the comment. I need to commit to putting out these little fires immediately before they become big problems. From now on I am going to be more to the point about nipping these behaviors in the bud and explaining explicitly that I know the kid wasn't trying to be mean, but those types of jokes aren't acceptable in my classroom, regardless of the intention.
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Emma BooneFirst year 8th grade PBL math/science teacher and graduate student, wondering a bunch and figuring a few things out here and there. Archives
December 2018
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