How to Create a Successful Classroom

How to Create a Successful Classroom, Ideas on Classroom Management

Emphasis on student relationships in their classrooms and schools are important for environments where mutual respect and learning flourish!

·         A successful classroom has management that works. Begin the year with setting the tone for your classroom by establishing routines, procedures, and expectations for all students, including the teacher. Students respect the teacher that respects them. With those standards in place, any teacher will have a successful school year.

·         Taking time and being intentional about building a positive and productive learning environment is essential to any successful classroom. Relationships are key! Strong connections between student and teacher, as well as student and peers, provide a strong foundation for growth in social, emotional, and academic learning.

·         Be patient—children will not get to mastery at the same time. Be flexible—know that students learn in different ways, just like we travel in different ways (some people fly and some people ride bikes). Listen—students have a difficult time expressing themselves as it is. Allow yourself an opportunity to hear them (such as through journaling). Love them—showing up at events or giving them a fist bump or a high-five in the hall are ways to let students know that you love them and notice them.

·         In my classroom, I first work to create a classroom community in which I develop relationships with the kids and help the kids develop relationships with each other. We look at it through the lens of “We are a family in this classroom.” A teacher can develop the best lessons and have a variety of amazing ways to deliver it, but when a child knows you care about them, they will work beyond what they think they can for you. Relationships with students are THE key to having a successful classroom.

·         Successful classrooms are built around magic, routines, and relationships. A classroom should be an exciting place where students think anything can hap - pen. The difference between excitement and chaos are your consistent routines for everything from putting away homework to getting the class’ attention to how students’ desks are organized. None of that is possible, however, if the classroom is missing the most important thing: genuine love and personality from you. A hug, a smile, and a note, are powerful tools.

·         A successful classroom has a teacher who believes in every student and instills that belief in each one of them. This room invites risk-tasking, problem-solving, community-building, a place in which everyone works together to achieve each person’s goals. A successful classroom also has a teacher that learns everything he or she can about a student and utilizes that information to create lessons that are engaging and inspiring to all.

·         In order to create a successful classroom, your students must feel loved. No matter what age level you teach, build relationships with them to show you care. Spend some time getting to know your students and take an interest in their lives. Once they feel you genuinely care about them, they aim to please you and learning will take place.

·         What make a successful classroom are the relationships that a teacher can form with students. There has to be that foundation to ensure that your students “buy in” to what you are telling them, and ensure that they value your thoughts and opinions. Kids will do anything for someone who believes in them and puts value into who they are as people.

·         Build relationships with your students and show them that you truly care about them as people and students. When a classroom foundation starts with respect from the teacher for all students, the students in turn respect the teacher and are more willing to put forth effort and make gains in their achievement.

·         For a successful elementary classroom, there must be clear expectations with consistent consequences, because classroom management has been proven to be the No. 1 predictor of learning outcomes. Children must know they are loved and cared for, but also held to high expectations as any good parent would do—tough love! Finally, instruction should be rooted in what is important to children. Activities should be highly engaging and appropriate to their varying ability levels—less is more. As much as possible, let students lead!

·         The elements of any successful classroom include a teacher that is constantly reflecting on his/her craft. When a reflective teacher evaluates his/her daily instructional practices, he/she can quickly diagnosis strengths and weaknesses within the students’ work. By focusing on the areas of need in the students’ work, he/she can develop an individual plan based on the needs of students. This leads to gradual improvement in student achievement—the ultimate goal for ALL teachers.

·         A successful classroom is one where teachers and students respect and trust each other, one where the teacher believes that students have the ability to achieve and students always do their best work. It is a place where we feel safe and welcoming, with a strong sense of community. 

Happiness is a Choice

A man of 92 years, short, very well-presented, who takes great care of his appearance, is moving into an old people’s home today. His wife of 70 has recently died, and he is obliged to donate his home for orphan house.

After waiting several hours in the retirement home lobby, he gently smiles as he is told that his room is ready. As he slowly walks to the elevator, using his cane, I described his small room to him, including the sheet hung at the window which serves as a curtain. "I like it very much", he said, with the enthusiasm of an 8 year old boy, who has just been given a new puppy. 
 

"Sir, you haven’t even seen the room yet.” I wondered and asked.

“That has nothing to do with it ", he replied."Happiness is something I choose in advance.  Whether or not I like the room does not depend on the furniture or the decor – rather it depends on how I decide to see it and how I look at it." “It is already decided in my mind that I like my room. It is a decision I take every morning when I wake up.” 
  
“I can choose. I can spend my day in bed enumerating all the difficulties that I have with the parts of my body that no longer work very well or I can get up and give thanks to heaven for those parts that are still in working order."

“Every day is a gift, and as long as I can open my eyes, I will focus on the new day, and all the happy memories that I have built up during my life."

Of Silence

In an age of pops and rocks, to talk about silence seems redundant, incongruent and out of place. We are so used to the noise around us and within us; it has become impossible to live without it. Some of us have become identified with the kind of noise that we make. Sometimes when this noise is silent, we become so uncomfortable that we dread silence in all forms. From our childhood, we have been taught and trained to be noisy that it has become the way of life. This, we have inherited from our parents, elders and forefathers. Any achievement or progress that we make in our daily lives is measured in proportion to the amount of noise that we make!

We have come to accept that silence is some kind of ‘death’ and to be alive is to be noisy. Noise has come to be accepted as our essential existential condition. We treat it as an inevitable necessity of life. From very early days of our lives, we are taught to be noisy to get what we want. We scream, shriek and shout and throw up tantrums and disturb others to get what we want. Aren’t these the first lessons of our childhood?

The deadening noise about and around us make our lives so stressful and difficult. Our noisy jets, factories and machineries mark the progress we have made, don’t they? The magnitude of noise is visible in our city markets, in the malls, in the picture halls, in our stadiums… Our airports, railway stations and bus stations, the fairs and festivals that we hold, the offices and workstations we have created … – the list goes on – are all very expressive of how best noisy we could be. Why, even the village teashops prove not less than a market place. What about temples wherein we conduct our worships and offer prayers; we believe that the noisier our worship or our prayer is the better for God to hear us! Are our highways and freeways spared of this condition? The never ending howl has become a requisite for our travels. But for this humdrum, our travels could be more restful and relaxing, couldn’t they?

Look at our schools and colleges! We have converted our kids into a noise producing factories. The child that enters the classrooms lives with a variety of indispensable noises and it begins to learn to make noise in a variety of ways. Our learning centers have become a mass noise creating machineries.  The teacher, who is in command in the classrooms, affirms the child’s learning that noise is an important part and parcel of our lives. Surely, whether she teaches science or mathematics, she does teach the art of making the most dreaded forms of noises. And as the child grows up, his ability to make noise improves, and he arrives to the conclusion that nothing good can be achieved without noise. More the noise, better the achievement! And the world outside – adult world or otherwise – confirms this fact.

The reason for all this, according to me, is our noisiness and turmoil within. We are constantly troubled by our selfishness, greed, hatred and fear. And we infect others and our environment with these. As a result, there is untamable noise everywhere all the time. Our cry for attention and appreciation, our cry against corruption and crimes, our cry for justice and jubilance, our cry against oppression and atrocities are voluminous. And, we have developed an innate desire to be heard and so we shout down others, we pull down what we built ourselves, we scream and shriek to feel our lies true. Aren’t these the reason for the major illnesses and diseases? The chaos and misery constitute our destruction of ourselves and all the life forms around us.     

But, the truth is the opposite. If we look around, the most exquisite things happen in utmost silence. The beautiful rising sun does it all in an enticing silence. The bud flowering occurs in the quiet. The cocoon turns into a butterfly in absolute silence. There is no announcement made when a seed opens itself under the ground to put out the shoot. The shell within the deep seas turns a water droplet into a priceless pearl in silence. The melodious brooks, the stillness on the mountain tops, the serene sunset … all of these have an appalling ability to enable creativity at its best. Even the very being of man, though there is noise all about him, longs for peace and silence.

In sickness, doctors advise quiet. When man is troubled, what he seeks is silence. When faced with difficulties, solutions are sought in silence. Most important decisions are arrived at after they are deliberated and discussed in deep silence and tranquility of mind and heart. Calm is a must before we come to difficult decisions, as would a tiger do before he overcomes its prey. We are taught to get into silence before we go before God, in prayer.

But, aren’t there sounds or noises around us? The thunder, the strong winds, the birds, the animals … do make their noises. If we deeply observe all these ‘noises’ they are sounds that have rhythm in them. The waves embracing the shore, the waterfalls doing their somersaults, the storm ravaging the woods …all of these definitely have a pleasant music about them. The buzz of the insects, the roars of the oceans, the murmur of the rains and the sound of silence in nature transports us to a different world altogether.  

Silence plays an important role in the lives of men and women who have lived great lives. Mahatma Gandhiji attached an immense value for silence in his life. He remained silent throughout a day in a week. Saints and sages got themselves away from the maddening world to carve out a great life, while being in it. Mother Teresa would be a great example of this. Men and women worked toward greatness in silence without any noise and screams. Sachin Tendulkar’s greatness will lie in the fact that he worked to his ‘God of Cricket’ status, not with a signboard around his neck, but in silence. He played his game after game with utmost sincerity and focus that brought him this title. We have innumerable examples of this kind in our lives, homes and other places. While on the other hand, there have been few who made themselves to greatness with noise and roars. Life around us stands an excellent proof of this.

Let us teach our children that ‘silence is golden’ yet once again, boldly and clearly. We should also teach ourselves through our silenced selves and serene disposition, giving up all anger and frustration.