Community

While studying education, something that is always mentioned is the positive classroom community. We’ve all realized that learning cannot take place in an uncomfortable or unfriendly environment, so we need to have a positive classroom community. But what exactly does the word community mean? To paraphrase a large amount of different definitions, a community is a a “group of people sharing common goals and attitudes”. So to think about what I would like my classroom to look like, I would want my students to have an attitude that they can accomplish anything I give them, and a goal to do their best and learn as much as they can.

These are things that go into my personal identity as a teacher. But now the nerve racking question of how can I create this positive classroom community where my students are inspired and motivated to do their best? Luckily, the internet is vast and offers many ideas that I can mull over and decide what I may want to try and what I don’t want to try, here is an example, http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept08/vol66/num01/Seven-Strategies-for-Building-Positive-Classrooms.aspx. Chapter 7 in Subjects Matter also explicitly lists some strategies to build a classroom community.

To connect to the article on mindfulness, while the idea of The Still Quiet Place may seem a little goofy, I think it would really work in a high school classroom. School is stressful enough and sometimes even I find myself needing to take a step back and look at things in smaller pieces instead of just the large final product. A friend of mine that teaches social work classes at RIC was recently telling me about how it’s that time of year when his inbox is swamped with student emails and that he ends all of his e-mails with “remember to take deep breaths”, something I feel everyone forgets. But to get back on The Still Quiet Place, after I read the article on mindfulness on Thursday, I was immediately determined to use this practice at work the next day, and I knew exactly who I was going to use it on.

There is this one 8 year old boy that I often refer to in my head as “the end of the world kid”, because if the littlest thing goes wrong or someone looks at him the wrong way, he seems to act like the world is coming to an end, having a full on tantrum. Well, Friday morning at 7:00 A.M. when his brother told him he didn’t want him on his foosball team, he began crying and screaming at his brother calling him a “stupid jerkface”. Even though I was half asleep still, The Still Quiet Place popped into my head and I quickly called this child over and told him I wanted to try something out. He started to cry more because he thought he was in trouble, saying he didn’t really mean what he said. I reassured him he wasn’t in trouble and when his sobs turned to whimpers I had him close his eyes and find his quiet place. He relaxed very quickly and when he was finally relaxed enough, he gave me a hug and went back to playing. I was impressed at how well it seemed to work and I am definitely planning on using it on a larger group. Unfortunately it was about 20 minutes until it seemed like the world was ending again. I now know I have another tool in my back pocket to use when things seem to get a little out of hand. I’m actually curious about other techniques like this that could be used to relax students.