Safe Learning Environment

The fourth element of the Candidate Assessment of Performance is 2.B.1: Safe Learning Environment. The CAP says to meet diverse needs an educator “uses rituals, routines, and appropriate responses that create and maintain a safe physical and intellectual environment where students take academic risks and most behaviors that interfere with learning are prevented” (Massachusetts DOE, 2016).

When I first read this CAP element, I thought it was going to be about how your students felt physically safe in the classroom. But as I read the description, I realized it was much more than that. Yes, your students should always feel physically safe in the classroom that is just a basic human right but safety in the classroom goes beyond that. In order for your students to be able to let down their walls and actually learn, they have to also feel mentally safe.

In my classroom, we focus a lot on how mistakes are a part of learning. I make sure that every time one of my students answers a question I do not change my tone of voice from before when the answer is wrong. I also make sure to think about where they got the answer from so I can praise that they were able to pull a new idea into what we are learning now. By doing this, the students are more likely to feel comfortable answering even if they aren't sure if the answer is correct.

One of the biggest things that I push in my classroom is that mistakes are a part of learning. I tell my students all the time I would rather they give me a wrong answer than a correct answer when I ask questions in class. For instance, I had one of my students answer something that was very far off from what the correct answer was and the class started laughing so I shut it down very fast. We had a discussion that day (it was early September) after about how we need to respect when people have different viewpoints or answers. I talked about how you can't laugh at someone for trying it’s a quality to respect being able to put yourself out there. After that day, my class now has a phone a friend policy when the students get an answer wrong if they can’t figure it out they can call on someone else during class to help them. The students love it because they get to collaborate and it has made a very healthy working environment in my classroom.

Another way that I have implemented a safe learning environment in this way was by a homework assignment my mentor teacher and I decided to write. We had the students read an article titled “Why Struggle Is Essential for the Brain — and Our Lives”. We always talk about how if you don't struggle in class you will never actually learn anything. The best learning comes from struggle. If we just gave the students the answer they would not understand where the math comes from and therefore not remember it. But if they come up with the answer themselves, they are more likely to remember it because they understand it on their own terms. The article basically sums that up. Whenever we start a new subject in my classroom I have at least one student (but usually more), that give me the “puppy dog eyes” and tell me that this doesn’t make sense and they are confused and I will respond with a smile and say “good that just means you will learn something new. I love that it’s difficult you are supposed to be confused in the beginning of a new topic in anything you do”. Then they usually proceed to pout because I do not give them the answer right away but it does push them to try again because we have an understanding in my classroom that struggle produces better results.

One of the more evident ways in my classroom that we have a safe learning environment comes from the routine we have. In each one of my classes when the students come into the classroom I have an agenda on the board on what we are going to do that day. I then start my class every day by verbally explaining what the objective is for the day and going over the agenda. The students have responded to this really well because they know what to expect in the class. However, I didn't realize how much it affected their stability in my classroom, until one day I had forgotten to put the agenda on the board and one of the students in my classroom commented on it and asked me to write it for them on the board.

In my algebra geometry 1 class (AG1) this is especially apparent how much they rely on structure. This is my class where the majority of the class is on and Ed. plan of some sort so they like structure. We do the same thing at the start of every class. We start with a warm up and we have the same structure warm up for each day of the week. On Mondays, we do a “Which one Doesn’t Belong”, Tuesday is “Pattern Talks”, Wednesday is “My favorite Mistake”, Thursday is a “Clothesline Math” and then we have “Free for All Fridays”. The predictability of the class helps all students, but especially ones that struggle with math it helps them relieve some of that stress if they know what is coming.

Which one doesn’t belong are my favorite warm up, because there is no long answer as long as you back up your thinking. The point is to choose which out of the 4 squares does not belong and explain why.

Between the feedback I got from my students and Irene, I have achieved exemplary status within this CAP element.