Needs for Autonomy, Competence, and Belongingness

A major component of both Competency 6 & 8 is the fostering of community: "Helps students persevere in their learning by supporting their efforts and progress", " Fosters collaborative work, discussions, participation and mutual help among the students", "Helps students to develop a sense of belonging by involving them in class and school activities". "Relatedness", as Ryan & Deci (2000) refer to it, allows students to feel safe to express themselves authentically and explore what truly interests them. In other words, belonging to a community allows students to engage their autonomy and feel competent. This was my first priority when entering the classroom for my 6-week practicum: building personal rapport with students and fostering connections between them. 

One of the ways I worked towards this was through the "Dream City" activity in this lesson on the Mexica discovering their homeland. For the activity in this lesson, students worked in groups to create a fictional city of their dreams. I allowed students to be as abstract or realistic as they wanted and circulated through the classroom to encourage everyone to add their own unique visions to the cities. Students were excited and worked together to build off each others' ideas, creating an environment of collaboration and camaraderie. As each group shared their city with the class, I wrote down the major aspects of their creations: infrastructure, population, natural features etc... From there, we built connections betwen cities, looking at the similarities of some and unique aspects of others. Some students were more comfortable creating individual cities, but they also shared their creations and were encourage by their classmates with rounds of applause. The sense of community and belonging that stemmed from this activity was beautiful to see.

I also learned a valuable lesson from this activitiy regarding competency 6: "Helps students to recognize and appropriately manage their behaviours and emotions". With all the excitement surrounding the creation of these cities, the noise and socializing levels increased dramatically. This was not an issue until it came time for groups to present their cities to the class. It became difficult to return the attention of the class to the front in respect for their classmates. For subsequent classes, then, I ensured that the poster boards that were used to design the cities were handed in and that every group came to the front of the class to present one by one. This created an expectation of mutual respect where groups would be accountable to each other. As this expectation became established, students would keep one another accountable without the need for my intervention. 

This lesson also addressed the need for a sense of competence for students. As we discovered the important aspect of the city of Tenochtitlan, we made connections to the cities the students had created. Every city had at least one aspect that could be related to Tenochtitlan and students would cheer as their cities gained a connection. This created a sense of accomplishment in the classroom that they had all thought of important aspects that related to one of history's greatest cities. I also made a point of including some of the more "ridiculous" components as it added a sense of whimsy to the lesson. By the end of this activity, no groups or individuals had been left out of feeling like they had contributed to the exploration of Tenochtitlan.

By creating a lesson which was centered around students' creations, I was able to foster greater instrinsic motivation as their cities became the connecting link of the content. By having them accomplish this feat together, we created a sense of community and belonging where students felt free to be silly, goofy, and authentic, while their ideas still applied to the historical context. This led students to be more enthusiastic about learning about the real city of Tenochtitlan as it felt grounded in their creative collaboration.