Every parent wants their child enrolled in a school or college that excels in creating a positive classroom learning environment. And as a teacher, it’s your responsibility to ensure that every pupil taking your class stays motivated, focused, and interested throughout the day.
Now you might ask why this is important. To understand this, you might want to gaze into the past when you were a student. Were there instances where you’d dread attending classes taught by a particular teacher, or all the teachers?
Don’t take this personally, but perhaps the problem was not the teachers, but you not being able to motivate yourself. While self-motivation is a must for every student, not all students are alike. For instance, college students are adults who can force themselves to kindle interest in subjects and attend lectures no matter how boring the subject or the lecturer.
Students engaged in early childhood education, on the other hand, aren’t as adept at self-motivation as older students. This is the reason why, as a teacher, you must take it upon yourself to create a healthy classroom environment for all students irrespective of their age, or levels of attentiveness.
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The benefits of maintaining a positive classroom environment are also plenty. Students overcome the fear of being judged for answering incorrectly or making mistakes. Moreover, they feel safe, interact with their classmates to solve problems, and motivate themselves or others.
Positivity in the classroom also opens up their minds and they realize (sooner or later) that learning is a lifelong process, and they’re responsible for what they choose to learn.
Here’s What You Will Learn About Effective Classroom Management For Positive Student Behaviour
- Constructive Classroom Climate Pointers
Encouraging Contributions and Togetherness
As the mentor, it’s your responsibility of making your students realize that alienating individual—or a group of—students is wrong. You must rope them in and instill the feeling of attachment to the classroom, and all others in it.
Of course, you must also read your students very carefully and know their individual strengths and weaknesses. You must also foster an environment that helps them tune in with what they’re learning and your objectives.
Stress on engaging students by grouping them into pairs, sharing materials with their goals, and putting up photographs of classroom activities.
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Promote Partnerships
Just because they come into class every day and call you Mr. X or Mrs. Y doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with them. And by ‘friend’, it means a respected individual from whom students can derive inspiration and be comfortable sharing problems.
It can be the other way too, but as a teacher, you might want to put a lid on sharing your problems with them. According to one of the student testimonials, having a teacher-friend makes the process of going to school less painful as not only are there friends around, but also one more standing right at front teaching the entire class. The student also highlights that a friendly teacher allows a student to enjoy the class more and study effectively.
You can start off building healthy student-teacher or student-student relationships by asking all to write letters to one another. Remember to send letters to students parents (or call them directly over the phone) informing them about introducing such a method to encourage togetherness.
Having said that, you must never shy away from asking doubts to your colleagues, or teachers on the internet who have gone through the same ordeal. And even if they haven’t, they might just have great tips to offer.
While building student-teacher relationships you must always keep a few pointers in mind:
- Always be respectful and try remembering all of your students names
- Balance time between curriculum and interacting with them
- Find out more about their likes and dislikes
- Always offer a window of opportunity—before or after class—to students who’d want to share problems they’re facing
Ignorance Is Not Blissful
Students, as you know by now, will always demand your undivided attention and focus. When they speak, you should listen whilst maintaining eye contact. It’s never the furniture or the board that makes up the class, but them. And they’re humans who demand recognition.
Also, if you’re listening to them never turn your back. Rolling your eyes, making fun of what they say, sighing, frowning should also be done away with when your students speak.
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Maintaining Student Discipline
Student leadership takes a hit when a classroom hasn’t maintained student discipline. What’s scary is that even teachers sometimes have discipline problems that can totally demotivate students.
As a student who sets foot into a classroom filled with other people, he or she must feel comfortable and safe. This should happen even before lessons are taught by a teacher. And it’s necessary because feeling safe and comfortable can result in raising the confidence level of the student to answer questions.
Classroom bullying can deteriorate a child’s fragile thinking and confidence. There are plenty of ways you can adopt to stop bullying. For instance, if you witness a student shaming another with a mean comment, ask the offender politely to utter two more comments praising the ridiculed.
Once it’s over, tell everyone about the demerits of bullying. Also, explain to the offender that had he been on the receiving end of the mean comment(s), the culprit would be treated the same.
As the mentor, you should not stress on the tit-for-tat methods to counter bullying, but the fact that you love all your students, and they must equally love one another.
At the end of the day, they’re young, fragile, and like clay which can be moulded as per your tutelage. They’re going to be the leaders of tomorrow, and no one but you will feel proudest of their achievements.