A Positive Classroom Climate.

Hey everyone! 

So today, I’d like to talk about creating a positive classroom climate. This is an incredibly important step to a successful teaching experience and cannot be overlooked. A student must have the desire to be in the classroom before they can begin to learn there. If a student doesn’t like being in the classroom, it will be significantly harder to get the content of the lesson into their head.

Step one is to have a welcoming environment. Each student needs to feel that you care about them. There are many strategies to do this. I always like to start every new lesson by memorizing each child’s name and making sure I can pronounce it properly. I also want to make sure that the kids see me as friendly and agreeable, but still someone they can respect and are willing to listen to. One way to do this is to make them laugh. If the kids are laughing, they are more likely to be focused and attentive to my lesson while also enjoying themselves. This may be easier said than done though, depending on the age group. A preschool or kindergarten class is pretty easy to make laugh with funny voices or cartoonishly over exaggerated emotions, but a jr. high school group might require a more subtle method. 

It’s also very important to take into account other children’s cultures when creating a positive classroom. This is another reason why learning the kids names is very important. A child will feel unwelcome if their names aren’t being pronounced. You absolutely must not assign them a nickname instead of their real name if they don’t want you to. 

Your seating arrangement must aim for cultural diversity as much as possible. I currently teach a class of 18 children. Three of them are Korean, two are Chinese, and one is Indian. The rest are Japanese. When assigning seating, I take care not to group all the Koreans in one table, for example. This encourages the students to interact with the children outside their own familiar culture, and also lets me see them as individuals that are a part of the class, rather than as representatives of their race. (It also has the added benefit in my class of helping their English. Instead of facing the temptation of speaking their native tongue to friends, they are required to use the shared language of learned English with their neighbors.) 

A classroom must also be a safe environment for kids to learn in. That means facing the issue of bullying in the classroom. It may be difficult to address every single case (some might happen online or in places the teachers cannot see) but teachers must do their best to respond to every case they notice. It might be physical, or verbal bullying. It might be singling out a target, or just excluding them. Also, the circumstances behind each bully and victim might be different. In any case, one must consider the reasoning behind the bullies actions in addition to the feelings of the victim. Is there bullying the result of a lack of understanding about the victim, or perhaps some sort of conscious or unconscious bias against them? It may be an act of rebellion or acting out about something wrong in their life outside of school. In some cases, talking to the bully (as opposed to just strictly disciplining them) might yield better results. Getting them to see that their actions have negative consequences might help them to see why they should reevaluate their actions. 

A positive classroom climate is key to the learning environment. Making sure students look forward to coming to class is a surefire way to ensure a healthier and more productive learning environment.