I strive to have an inclusive, supportive and safe learning environment for all of my students. I believe that students learn best when they feel respected and safe, encouraged to respond to questions in class without the fear of being ridiculed. I ensured my students that no questions are “stupid”, and every response is valued. To encourage student participation, I would write their names on the board and every time a student would answer or discuss a question, they would get a tick after their name. This worked exceptionally well with my year 8’s and 9’s as it was encouragement and a visual representation of their contribution. Even the students who didn’t like public speaking, would respond verbally to the class discussion.
It is important to maintain classroom activities and the environment to ensure every class member feels safe and secure. What worked with my year 9’s, a class of 16, did not work as well with my year 8’s, a class of 30. I believe this was due to the size of the class and the different maturity levels of each year level. It is amazing how one year can improve the maturity of the students. I found that trying to compete with the class noise with my own voice did not work, and I recognised early on that visual cues such as putting my finger to my lips and shushing them worked quite well. I also found that singling out the well-behaving students and praising them attracted attention from the wrong doers, and as each student followed the lead, I eventually had a quiet class full of students. My mentor teacher gave me some excellent resources on managing classroom behaviour in which I implemented into my classroom activities.
The most challenging behaviour i had was classroom disturbance, students walking around the classroom and the worst was when two male students engaged in a physical fight which resulted in a headlock. The best way for me to manage this behaviour was to stay calm and slowly distract the students so that they didn't continue to hurt each other. I watched the Bill Rogers videos and implemented his four behaviour management strategies of prevention, repair and rebuild, consequences and positive correction. Furthermore, I used proximity in order to keep the off-track student on track. I also worked one on one with the students that were off topic. I noticed that the poor behaviour either came from boredom, not understanding the task, or finishing the task early, therefore upon realising this I was able to implement further strategies to keep students occupied. Both of my mentors said I excelled in this area and I believe that the more confident I got, the more likely I was to implement these behaviour management strategies.
I attended a Keeping children safe course; a mandatory reporting course and a child screening checks. Student safety is paramount and one of the most important things in a classroom. Not only physical safety but also social and emotional safety too. I believe my kind and calm demeanour helped students to feel at ease in my presence, allowing them to be their true selves. I attended the year 9 Rite journey camp in week 8 of my placement, here we went abseiling, mountain bike riding, rock climbing and hiking. Before the camp the three teachers (myself included) had to have meetings about safety and ensure we had the right protocols in place if something were to go wrong.
Fortunately, the school I worked at had strategies in place where there were blocks on certain sites that protected the students from seeing anything they shouldn't. Furthermore, I was responsible for maintaining this standard with the videos I showed the class. I had to be especially careful when showing videos and footage of the holocaust and would check the videos first, send them to my mentor and then sometimes to the principle to ensure it was safe for the students to watch.