In this
reflection I will talk about a way in which you can achieve the four items of a
successful classroom: relationships, magic, whatever it takes, and dreams; this
taking into account what we saw in class about the teacher of the year and what
she said about the key elements in her class, and the readings and
presentations about them. Showing you care is very important for the students
and for you as a teacher in your classroom, this is a big step to have a
successful classroom. It is something that requires a lot of effort and
different characteristics from you; e.g. being constant, honest, and resourceful,
among others. To show you care you have to observe your students and get to
know them, but also they need to get to know themselves.
The strategy to build relationships
where you get to know your students at the beginning of the school year through
questions is very important, but with other ingredients it will not only give
truthful information about them, but it can give them information about themselves.
Relationships are built with time, so it’s a misconception to think the students
will give you all the information you need in the first day, week, or month;
you as teacher need to do more. The reasons may vary, for example they don’t
know themselves well enough yet, they don’t trust you from the beginning, and/or
simply they are not ready to share information about themselves. This is why
some of the information about your students can be gathered from the first day
and some other you have to work harder to obtain it (advice: choose your
questions carefully).
A
good way to gather this information could be through the self-discovery process
they will live through your class. If you apply strategies in which they
collect information about themselves you will also be able to observe them and
get deeper and better details that will help you create and manage a successful
classroom. One example of a self-discovery strategy is to show them progress in
their educational process, use your lessons to help them have opinions and make
decisions for themselves. You can begin your lesson with a question about the
topic that involves decision making before you give them the new information,
the lesson will be the way to guide them and help them arrive to their own well-founded
answer of the question with which you began the lesson. Then it’s important
that they can see, through for example progress maps, how they have progressed
in their answer, not necessarily because they changed it, but because it’s
better structured, founded, and based on what they realized about themselves
through your lesson (using the GANAG+SIOP will make this easier).
Later
on the year you can repeat the questions you gave them at the beginning of the
school year and let them compare their answers with the first ones they gave. They
will see some answers that are the same, but they will find that others changed
because they know more about themselves, they trust you more, and they are
willing to share more now. With this information and the one you have been collecting
as a teacher it will be easier to create honest and lasting relationships,
bring magic to your classes through their real interests, do whatever it takes
to help your students now that you know them better, and use their real dreams
as inspiration, given that this dreams are more accurate regarding what they
really want.
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