Granted, my world of teaching is very different than many other classrooms. First of all, my room is split into two seperate rooms. One of the rooms is an apartment. Then there is a classroom part, which is not used nearly as much as the apartment but we still use it. When it came to decorating, obviously the apartment was going to look like a home where people lived but my classroom, that was another story.
Thinking back to my college classes, I remember one of my classmates, who was getting her emergency certification in Special Education, stating that her students hated to go home on the weekends. The students would say that the best part of the weekend was Monday morning when they got to come back to school. With this in my head, I started thinking about how I wanted my classroom to look and how I wanted it to make my students feel. Bulletin boards with cute designs and student work was always neat to see in elementary classes, but dealing with high school students who do very little paperwork, I was stumped! So I thought back to what my classmate had said, students hated to go home on the weekends and realized that I wanted my classroom to be a home, a good and happy home where students took pride in it but also felt that it was welcoming. So this year, when I moved to my third classroom, I had a clean slate and could do what I always wanted to do. I set out to make my classroom that place where my students wanted to be.
The first week of school, I worked with all 9 of my special needs students to paint the walls. Granted, I did a great deal of the painting, but each one of my students still had some place on the wall that they had each painted. Then I hung art work that was inspirational rather than something you would hear from a teacher. I wrote my kids a positive letter on a large piece of poster board, framed it and made sure it was located somewhere where they could see it often. I made my room that place that my students wanted to be.
I strongly believe that my students feel welcome in my classroom and they see it as their second home...maybe as their first home for some...but I do believe that my room is a place they enjoy. They made it their room, but they also see the sayings on the walls that are there to encourage them and make them feel loved.
My room may not be the same as the teacher's room in the article "How Classroom Environment Can Ignite Learning and Cultivate Caring" but my room does have the same sort of throught put into it.
http://www.edutopia.org/stw-career-technical-education-student-success-david-garibaldi-video?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
Wow Jenny! That's pretty impressive. When you say that half of your room is an apartment, do you actually mean apartment where someone lives or is that just the "home" feeling you were describing?
ReplyDeleteEither way, your learning environment does seem impressive.
I really can connect to what you were saying about students feeling like your classroom is their second home. Just today I had a student saying that he wished he could stay here. I haven't been able to dig deeper into what's happening at home (yet) but it really made me think about the bond I'm forming with my students. Despite days where I feel like I'm doing nothing but "yelling" and flipping cards (my management style) it seems I'm still offering a good environment.
My other half of my room really is set up like an apartment...with a full kitchen, washing machine and dryer, bed, couch and tables. My students work on their home skills so that they can be independent around the home!
ReplyDeleteSometimes it is hard for us to realize that we do make a bigger impact on our kids than just teaching them. I am glad that your room is a place that your student wants to stay at...that means you have really become more than just a teacher to that kid....something that is more important than anything we could ever teach!