TOUCHSTONE 8: I create an oasis of safety and respect in my classroom.
Explanation
Creating a supportive school climate that allows learners to feel safe is keyed on in touchstone eight. It is well known that bullying takes a heavy toll on students emotionally and happens often in our schools. This emotional setback for students also weighs heavy on their academic performance. Establishing clear well-formed rules of behavior and adequate consequences for misconduct should be identified and followed from the first minute students enter an educators class. These rules and procedures should always be framed in a positive light and made clear but simplified so interpretations cannot be lost. An effective way is to have classes and students help set norms within each individual class. You can guide these norms through several activities that you as the educator feel are vital to a well-functioning classroom. Once rule have been set you as an educator must know consequences and those can usually be found in a district discipline matrix. You have to be diligent in staying to task to rules and consequences especially early, work upfront leads to less time dealing with discipline as the school year proceeds. The oasis effect is fostered by “catching” students doing things right. Again consistency is the key accentuating positive behavior, providing words or tokens of gratitude and publicly recognizing students. Be encouraging for students to risk boldly and ask questions. We want students to continually try and put forth effort so we should commend those efforts even when they provide the wrong answer. Oftentimes we learn more from failure than we do success so celebrate those attempts. From an educator stand point we need to be in tune with our class. We need to be organized to limit idle time, we need to respond swiftly to inappropriate classroom behavior and consider a student’s motive. Don’t take it personal and don’t get personal when a student doesn’t rise to expectations, seek further information have that tough conversation to figure out why a student acted out of character; usually there is a backstory that doesn’t involve you or your class. The key is students must feel safe in order to learn and that rules are more than about school safety, they actually support learning by allowing students to move along Maslow’s Hierarchy.
Application
Within twenty years of education I have encountered one discipline problem that I couldn’t handle. Establishing and modeling classroom expectations are at the pinnacle of my teaching. Classroom rules are non-malleable and students need to know clearly without a doubt the expectations in an educator’s classroom. Behavior that was acceptable yesterday is not acceptable today, that is the quickest route to a chaotic and unorganized classroom. We as educators must be consistent with everything we do, establishing routines and behaviors is the clearest path to classroom management. Below is my syllabus that I will use in my Captain’s Course.
Additional Resources