Standard One discusses roles and relationships. We must evaluate the roles we serve, the roles our students serve, and the roles of our colleagues, schools, and communities in our classroom, as well as the expectations we set for our students with all of these roles in mind. In the classroom, the standard for student relationships is fulfilled when the classroom environment is crafted with the students in mind first and foremost. The students need a safe place to learn and equitable access to opportunities and materials, as well as freedom from judgment on factors such as class, race, gender, or languages spoken. It is also important that students are able to take some independent responsibility for their actions and their learning, and relate what they are doing to the community beyond their classroom walls. It is imperative that the teacher use appropriate reinforcing, reminding, and redirecting language to help students become autonomous learners. The teacher must also make a concerted effort to get to know her students and their lives outside of school in order to create an effective learning environment. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the teacher to consider who her students are, what they need in the classroom, and how the community beyond the classroom can be a part of the learning process for all students.

The first key concept in Standard One is the responsibility of the teacher to establish appropriate roles in the classroom. The teacher sets the tone for the rest of the class so it is important to establish oneself as a guide for the student as an active learner who has voice and autonomy in the classroom. Teacher language is a vital component of this responsibility. The way that a teacher’s speech provides direct instruction, offers support, and redirects unsafe behavior all contribute to the learning environment of the classroom. The importance of teacher language became especially relevant for me after reading The Power of Our Words by Paula Denton. One of the strategies that she recommends is allowing students to “show” what they know rather than listening to a teacher share that same information by using open-ended questions (Denton, 2014, p. 53). This strategy has been particularly helpful to me because it is applicable to a variety of situations. Whether I am generating interest in a lesson (ex. “What do you know about this topic?”) or reminding students to stay on task (ex. “What should you be doing right now?”), an open-ended question allows the student to think deeply about the answer and provide a thoughtful response based on what they know. I think this concept is directly related to the language in Standard One about high expectations and student independence. By giving the student the responsibility to answer the question, the teacher shows that she is confident in the student’s ability to find the answer to the question. I have been working on this in my SummerPrep classroom when I am explaining directions to students. I try to ask open-ended questions and pause for responses to let students show that they understand what they are about to be doing, and then I continue to ask open-ended questions while they are working to find out how they are applying their knowledge.

The second important component of Standard One is the maintenance of positive relationships between teacher and student. Teachers must get to know their students and ensure that students feel comfortable in the classroom. One of the ways that we can accomplish this is through a daily morning meeting. Anderson (2015) notes that morning meetings can help students fulfill a desire for belonging and importance in the classroom (Anderson, 2015, p. 16). As I am currently working with rising first graders, I have found that this need to be part of the class is particularly salient. Though our class is quite active, they are always eager to participate in morning meeting activities and show that they are a part of our classroom. In particular, many of our students respond positively to our daily sharing time during morning meeting. We often ask students one question and allow time for each student to respond in turn with a sentence or two. I experienced this “whip method” in our MAT analysis courses and I have found that it is a just-right way for our young students to open up to the class. They are able to share and feel included without the pressure of a long-winded response. My teaching partner and I learned more and more about our students every day as we came up with new topics for sharing at morning meeting.  We also ended each meeting with a morning message, which we read chorally with the class so everyone could participate. The MATs practiced different kinds of choral reading in our Analysis and Art Methods courses as well as during our Orientation activities. With more time in my future classrooms, I hope to incorporate some of these more advanced choral reading strategies into morning messages as the students seem to truly enjoy reading the morning messages aloud together.

Successful teachers also maintain positive relationships with their colleagues and school community. This summer I was very fortunate to have a wonderful teaching partner and a very helpful cohort of MAT students to support me in my teaching experience. My teaching partner and I communicated very openly and spent lots of time going over student work together and planning our lessons in unison. Although we each planned separate lessons, we always kept in contact so that our lessons were in sync. I think part of the reason that our relationship was so successful is that Hayley and I are both very organized. Our mentor teacher asked us to submit lesson plans over the weekend, and Hayley and I both followed up with one another and with our mentor teacher to ensure that all of our lessons were planned on time. We also discussed materials and copies to be made well in advance so that our lessons were fully prepared. Our united sense of classroom expectations was another successful aspect of our teaching relationship. I knew that when I was teaching a lesson, Hayley would be watching to reinforce, remind, and redirect students, and I did the same for her when she was teaching. Our MAT cohort was also immensely helpful in supporting my teaching this summer. In particular, I spent a lot of time debriefing with the Monarchs’ classroom teachers because we shared the same science curriculum and their students were just a bit older than the Daring Dragonflies. Having other teachers to debrief with was very helpful because they often provided new perspectives that I would not have considered in my own lesson planning. I hope to have similar bonds with the faculty and staff at all of the schools at which I teach.

In my future teaching experiences, I will improve upon my ability to create student expectations and hold students to those expectations in a consistent manner. Expectations are a vital component of Standard One because a classroom cannot function successfully if students do not know what their teacher expects of them. This summer I sometimes struggled with classroom management and holding students to my expectations for their behavior. We did create a set of community rules as a class, but I think I could have spent more time discussing these rules in depth with my students. In future classrooms, think I can improve my skills in this area by devoting more time to establishing classroom expectations at the beginning. My original expectations were not always specific enough, which led my students to be unsure what behaviors were acceptable and which ones were not. This fall I will also work on showing warmth, humor, and caring in my classroom. In one-on-one contexts, I think I was able to show care for my students but I sometimes struggled to bring this care to light in larger classroom situations. By remembering to smile and let my true feelings of care for my students and occasional silliness show through, I think I will be able to achieve the “warm demander” demeanor that helps to create a smoothly running classroom. I also hope to continue building relationships with the community beyond my classroom walls. I made a special effort to dismiss my students as often as I could, and greeted their family members when they arrived. In the future I think I can build upon these relationships with students’ families by continuing to find opportunities to engage with family members in settings that are less structured than a parent/teacher conference.

References

Anderson, M. (2015). The first six weeks of school. Turners Falls, MA: Center for Responsive Schools, Inc. 


Denton, P. (2014). The power of our words: Teacher language that helps children learn. Turners Falls, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc.