POSITIVE CLASSROOM CLIMATE

To create a positive classroom climate of caring, concern, and sincerity I never forget what Madeline Hunter said: "Kids don't care how much you know until they know how much you care".  Students need to feel known, liked, and respect before they can accept instruction.  A learning environment that is warm and inviting will allow students to feel welcome and take risks that will lead to new discoveries.

Discoveries?  Yes, discoveries of new academic content and success.  Also, discoveries about their classmates, their teacher, and themselves. Self-discovery can be a scary endeavor not only for students but for teachers as well.  We need to be willing to explore the uncomfortable territory of our own biases, prejudgments, and mindsets that may stand in the way of fully creating a positive and warm climate in our classroom.

By modeling our own willingness to acknowledge, assess, and reflect upon our experiences and belief systems that may lead to blocking an environment for acceptance of diversity will prove to be vital in directing our students to do the same. 

There are five components I follow to ensure a positive classroom climate:

1      . Self-Control Strategies: We need to check ourselves in every situation.  If we implement proactive strategies rather than reactive strategies to address undesirable behavior, we will avoid stress and possible burn out.  Proactive strategies would include setting clear expectations (make sure students have a say in the expectations and classroom rules) and consistency with follow through.

•       SMARTR: Student Mood Assessment and Rapid Teacher Response

•       Keeping Cool

•       Verbal communication

•       Calm is Contagious

•       Silence is Powerful

•       Tone-Volume-Cadence

•       Nonverbal communication

•       Be aware of Personal Space-1 ½ to 3 feet

•       Body Language

•       Punishment does not change behavior

•       Conflict is inevitable and essential.  Combat is optional!

•       Students will test the boundaries.  It is up to us to not escalate the situation into a battle of wills.  I have my proactive strategies in place to avoid the combat.

2.       Classroom Design Techniques

·         Desk arrangements

·         Ecological revisions: Use of

·   color

·   scent

·   lighting

·   music

3.       Teach to Appropriate Behaviors

·         Classroom Management: Two Essential Elements

·   Teaching classroom expectations (TLC)

·   Looking for performance on expectations (monitoring)

·   Consequent behavior – both positive and negative

·         Identifying classroom expectations

·   Student Voice (students need to participate in setting classroom expectations to feel a part of and have a sense of belonging to the community/class)

·         TEACH TOs

·   Determine what the TEACH TOs in your classroom/building (i.e. how to answer a question, how to transition between activities, how to turn in homework

·   New teachers may need to ask the veterans what the key rules should be.

·   Just posting rules in the classroom is not enough.

·   Front load, spend as much time as needed in the beginning to teach these.

·         Spend the first two or more weeks of school addressing the TEACH TOs.  Front loading the expectations will set up all my students for success.  Saves me time throughout the year on discipline and creates more teaching time of the content.

·         Direct Instruction Model

o   Model

o   Lead

o   Test

§  I do, We do, You do:  I explain and show the expectation and the teach To to my students, then I lead them in doing the teach to with me, then I ask them to show me what the exception looks like.  For example, I have a "Teach To" on how my students enter the classroom.  They are to enter the room shake my hand, say hello, get their writing journal, sit down and immediately start writing in the journal with a writing prompt I provide on the board.  The first two weeks of school, I write lesson plans on various TEACH TOs.  Therefore, there are no surprises of what is expected of the students throughout the school year.

4.       Accurate and Timely Consequences

·         I implement a patented method called REFOCUS.  It eliminates reminders and de-escalates a disciplinary situation.  A TEACH TO will, of course, be implemented so each student recognizes the Refocus method.  Here is the flow chart explaining REFOCUS:

5.       Student-Teacher Relationships

·         This is the foundation that needs to be established before anything else can take place successfully.

When students enter my room, they will see a room with inspirational quotes, images of diverse figures of history, and pictures of my family.  I found that having pictures of my children initiates a conversation with my students in the beginning of the year.  It opens communication between us as we learn more about one another.  

Sharing a bit of my history seems to soften the mood as they learn that I grew up in the same neighborhood they live in now.  I worked in a school in the city of Buffalo.  Our city has the unsavory statistic of being in the top 5 most segregated cities in America.  This awareness has led to many insightful conversations in my classroom.  Once my students realized I grew up in their neighborhood and encountered some biased and prejudice coming from an immigrant family really led to some uncomfortable yet enlightening conversations.

I  learned so much from my students and their perspective and I earned some credibility having grown up in their neighborhood.  We shared stories of isolation, prejudice, and unfair treatment for us individually and then for certain groups as a whole.

  We established expectations for our conversations, put downs and stereotypical slurs were not allowed.  We discussed topics of eugenics and how we can see evidence in our modern day. 

I don’t believe we could have had such invigorating conversations if we did not feel safe, respected, and trusted to share in such meaningful ways.  My room was known as the “safe” room for all students in the school.  The culture of the school was one of chaos and hostility.  I did my best to create a nook in the corner of my hallway of a haven for all students.  It was an environment that was warm, welcoming, and set up for active learning.
Bullying was a regular thing in our school.  There was no set policy in place.  If there was a policy, staff and administration were not consistent in implementing it.  Although school-wide bullying was not dealt with effectively or appropriately, My students and I established a "NO BULLYING" zone.  Our room was the safe place.  Rules were set in place and students held themselves and one another accountable.  Disrespectful words or tones were not tolerated in order to keep the bullying at bay.

At the onset of each school year, we would discuss what bullying looks like and how any given individual would or could feel as a result of bullying.  We would explore reasons why certain individuals may bully others.  In order to have "buy in" from all students for or NO BULLYING zone, they had to gain an understanding of the effects of bullying.  Many if not all of my students have been bullied at one point in their lives in and out of school.

I would have lesson plans that followed an anti-bullying curriculum from the National Education Association (NEA).  However, I had to make it real and relatable to my students.  The more I understood their personal experience with bullying, the easier it was to tailor the curriculum to their needs.

We established our room to be safe for students (all students not just my students) to 'escape' to my room if they felt threatened and the social worker was busy.  There was a triage of sorts of each situation.  Some incidents just required allowing the student to vent.  Some required a call to Social Worker and/or guidance counselor.  Some required getting the vice principal involved.  The most severe level would be contacting all support staff and the police.

This was not originally a school-wide practice, this is what my students and I developed and the other teachers seemed to welcome this Resource Room made policy.  By the third month into the school year, it was the unwritten protocol to follow for bullying in our school. I did return to the school the following school year.  Unfortunately, I do not know if administration updated their written anti-bullying policy.  I would hope they did.

In retrospect, I could have easily been the white older teacher from the suburbs to my students of color.  Instead, we created an environment that I was their best cheerleader who grew up on the same streets they live.  I was more than their teacher.   I was a mentor.  We created a haven for them to be, to learn, to share.

Dahlgren, R., & Hyatt, J. (2007). Time to teach: encouragement, empowerment, and excellence in     every classroom. Hayden Lake, ID: Center for Teacher Effectiveness (CTE).

Dahlgren, R., & Lattimer, M. (2012). Teach-tos: 100 behavior lesson plans and essential advice to encourage high expectations and winning classroom behavior! Hayden Lake, ID: Center for Teacher Effectiveness.

Kivel, K. (n.d.). Teaching Tolerance. Retrieved July 01, 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/TeachingTolerance.org

Phil Nast, retired middle school teacher and freelance writer. (n.d.).  Teaching Students to Prevent Bullying.  Retrieved July 02, 2017, from http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/teaching-students-to-prevent-bullying.html