I am a super high energy teacher who LOVES to always be moving. I can't really grasp the idea of making students sit still while they are learning and I especially can't understand why anyone would EVER want to have a QUIET classroom. I know I know I know, WHAT IS THIS WOMAN THINKING! I really hope that other educators can relate, understand or better yet agree, that students don't always learn in a quiet environment.
I would like my classroom to sound like a very large and busy bee hive. Lots of discussion collaboration. It would be silly for me think that I am the only person that they can learn from. When you have 30 students in your classroom, you have 30 extra teachers. Who better to explain a concept than someone who just learned it?! I love the sound of busy bees, ones who are bringing pollen back to help create honey! Sharing ideas with each other will only create better and bigger ideas. If we don't teach our students how to collaborate with each other... how are they going to survive in the future when they need to work in a job where there is constant collaboration?
We need to teach students how to work together successfully. When I say that I want all the students talking and buzzing around, it does not mean I am going to just let them loose! There are guidelines to teach and classroom management to work on. I don't believe that students are going to come in to my room knowing exactly what I am going to be expecting of them, and that is where collaboration will come in. As a teacher I really shouldn't know exactly what I expect from every one of my students until I get to know them and they get to know me! PLUS I can't expect anything from my students until they trust me, until they know that there is a safe place for them to be themselves and to ask questions and make mistakes.
Now you may be asking.... how will she create that environment? Well simply by being me! I will make mistakes and let them all know I made a mistake and that it is OK. I will trust my students and show them what it means to be able to trust someone. I will ask lots of questions and not ever make a student feel as if their question isn't important. Now with that being said, will I ever mess up and not live up to all of my goals and standards? Yes. I will probably mess up and be ashamed of how I handled a situation. I might fail. I might stay up all night long racking my brain on how to fix what I might have done the day before, or even how can I get one more student to understand the lesson we are working on. I might not be able to fix what I did wrong, but I can make sure I don't do it again. In short I will learn to dance like a teacher. I will boogie up and down and sing different songs and use different lyrics but overall I might dance a little or a lot, I might dance all night long trying to get the steps 'just right'. Maybe its a dance I have already 'perfected' so I sleep like a baby... only to find that the dance doesn't quite work and I have to make a whole new one up off the top of my head. Luckily I really like to dance. I really like to look silly and make people smile and realize that there isn't any mistake that they can make that will make them look sillier than I do. And in that... there is comfort and trust and a really safe place. At least I think so.
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