Respect begets respect. I make sure all students are part of the community of the room. Does learning happen in my room all the time? Most of the time. Well, probably not all the time. I want students to engage. Whether learning is happening or not, I still require students to be part of the class community. If you sleep; I wake you up. If you are talking; I tell you to be quiet. If you are disrespectful; you go stand in the hall. By cultivating community in the room, a feeling of: “we are in here for the next 50 minutes, we are in this together,” creates an environment where learning might happen.
Where does learning come from? The teacher blahing on about DNA replication, protein synthesis, or what ever it might be that day doesn't transcend the barriers of illiteracy, family life, or a culture of apathy to make the light flicker in students. My sheer energy can overcome those obstacles sometimes. Using my own life experience that aligns to my students sometimes will get them to perk up and listen for a minute. From the first days of summer school training to now, my expectations of myself in the classroom or how I give a lesson have changed quite a bit, all based on my expanded, hands on knowledge of teaching. When students are not meeting my “expectations of learning” I look at the lessons I am teaching, I look at my attitude in the classroom. When students don’t understand the differences between mitosis and meiosis its my fault. For as clear as I think it is, and they still struggle with haploid and diploid, somatic cell and sex cell, its my fault. I don’t have the base or creativity to reach every student, to reach inside them and open up whatever it is for them to receive this information. I am confident by the end of the year some of my students, and hopefully all will have some knowledge of the biological world they can be proud of. |