How To Add To Learning Environment

Past Jonathan C. Erwin, M.A., author of The SEL Solution: Integrate Social and Emotional Learning into Your Curriculum and Build a Caring Climate for All

There is a direct relationship between the kind of learning environs teachers create in their classrooms and student accomplishment. Here are 10 specific strategies for developing the optimal classroom climate and culture.

1. Address Student Needs
Remember that students, like adults, have not simply concrete needs but also important psychological needs for security and order, love and belonging, personal ability and competence, freedom and novelty, and fun. Students are driven to meet all of these needs all the time, not just two or 3 of them. When teachers intentionally accost these needs in the classroom, students are happier to be there, behavior incidents occur far less frequently, and student appointment and learning increases.

ii. Create a Sense of Order
All students need structure and want to know that their teacher not only knows his content area, but as well knows how to manage his classroom. Information technology is the instructor's responsibility to provide clear behavioral and academic expectations right from the beginning—students should know what is expected of them all the time. Another of import way to create a sense of order is by teaching students effective procedures for the many practical tasks that are performed in the classroom. For case, teach students how to:

Enter the classroom and become immediately engaged in a learning activity
Distribute and collect materials
Detect out almost missed assignments due to absenteeism and how to make them up
Get the teacher'due south attention without disrupting the class
Arrange their desks apace and quietly for various purposes: in rows facing the front for direct instruction, in pairs for collaborative learning, in groups of four for cooperative learning, and in a large circumvolve for class discussions

3. Greet Students at the Door Every Twenty-four hour period
As students enter your classroom, greet each one at the door. Explicate that you want students to make eye contact with you, give you lot a verbal greeting, and—depending on the age of the students—a high five, fist bump, or handshake. This way, every student has had positive man contact at least once that day. It also shows students that y'all care about them as individuals. If a student was disruptive or uncooperative the mean solar day before, it gives you an opportunity to check in, explain your "every mean solar day is a clean slate" philosophy, and express optimism for that class ("Permit'south have a great solar day today").

4. Let Students Get to Know You
Students come in to the classroom with preconceived perceptions of teachers. Sometimes it'due south good, sometimes it tin can be an obstacle. I wanted my students to perceive me every bit a trustworthy, three-dimensional man rather than as the two-dimensional perception of an "English teacher" that they may already have. Since the only fashion to impact people'southward perceptions is to provide them with new information or new experiences, I would give students a quiz nearly me during the offset week of school. (Of course, it didn't count.) I'd have them take out a slice of paper, number information technology from 1 to 10, and answer questions well-nigh me. Things like: Do I accept children of my own? Where did I grow upwardly? What is something I value? What is something I do for fun? What other jobs have I had too education?

Later on the quiz, we would become over the answers as a grade while I shared a slideshow of pictures of my children, my hometown, and representations of things that are important to me, like family, education, a strong piece of work ethic, fairness, and so on. (I would even get a express mirth out of some of their answers.) Students enjoy learning well-nigh their teachers, and the quiz gave me an opportunity to share who I am, what I value, and what experiences I bring to teaching.

If the "first week quiz" isn't something y'all're comfortable with, remember of other ways y'all can share with your students:

Who you are
What you stand for
What you will practise for students and what you lot won't do for them
What you will enquire of your students and what you lot won't ask of them

v. Become to Know Your Students
The more you know about your students' cultures, interests, extracurricular activities, personalities, learning styles, goals, and mindsets, the amend y'all can reach them and teach them. Some ways of getting to know your students:

Brainwash yourself about their cultures
Talk to them
Assign journal prompts and read and reply to them
Attend extracurricular events
Accept students complete interest inventories or surveys
Have students consummate learning fashion and personality assessments
Concur regular class meetings
Play team-building games with students

half dozen. Avoid Rewarding to Control
Over 50 years of research has shown that incentives, golden stars, stickers, monetary rewards, A's, and other bribes just serve to undermine students' intrinsic motivation, create human relationship issues, and lead to students doing nothing without a promised advantage. The human brain has its own rewards arrangement. When students succeed at a challenging job, whether it'south bookish (a grade presentation) or behavioral (getting through a class without blurting out), their brains get a shot of endorphins. Instead of devaluing their successes with stickers or tokens, talk to students nearly how information technology feels to achieve proficiency and praise the effort, strategies, and processes that led them to those successes. Then talk about what they learned this time that will help them achieve their next successes.

7. Avoid Judging
When students feel like they are being judged, pigeonholed, and/or labeled, they distrust the person judging them. It's hard non to estimate a educatee who just sits in that location doing no schoolwork afterward you've done everything y'all tin to motivate her. Information technology's easy to see how nosotros might call such students lazy. And it's easy to label the student who is constantly provoking and threatening peers equally a bully. But judging and labeling students is not only a way of shirking our responsibility to teach them ("There'south nothing I can do with Jonny. He's merely incorrigible."), but it too completely avoids the underlying problem. Instead of judging students, be curious. Ask why. (Where is this fear or hostility coming from?) One time you uncover the underlying reason for the behavior, that issue can be dealt with directly, fugitive all the fourth dimension and free energy it takes to cajole, coerce, and give consequences to students.

8. Employ Class-Building Games and Activities
Information technology's important to develop positive relationships with your students; information technology'due south equally important to develop positive relationships among them. One of the best ways to pause down the cliques within a classroom and help shy or new students experience a sense of belonging is to engage students in noncompetitive games and cooperative learning structures. There are hundreds of resources online and in books that provide thousands of appropriate choices for your grade level. Another benefit of bringing play into the classroom is that information technology gives your students a very powerful reason to come up to your class—it's fun.

9. Exist Vulnerable
Being vulnerable develops trust faster than whatever other approach. Admitting your mistakes shows that you lot are man and makes you more approachable. It also sends the message that it's okay to make mistakes in this classroom. That'south how we learn. Vulnerability and public self-evaluation likewise help develop a growth mindset culture: Nosotros embrace mistakes rather than endeavour to avoid them at all costs. We acquire from those mistakes and grow. Brand a simple mistake, like spilling a glass of h2o or misspelling a discussion on the lath, and instead of making excuses, talk about how you're glad you fabricated that mistake, because it taught yous something.

10. Gloat Success
At starting time this may seem to contradict strategy half dozen about fugitive rewards. It doesn't. A celebration is a spontaneous consequence meant to recognize an achievement. It is non hinted at or promised ahead of time like an "if-you-do-this-then-you-become-that" reward. Instead, you might set a class goal, such every bit the whole grade achieving 80 per centum or college on an assessment. Chart students' progress on a wall chart (percentages, not individual names). After each assessment, hash out the strategies, processes, or study habits that students used to be successful and what they learned and might do to improve on the next cess.

Once the class has achieved the goal, concord a commemoration. It doesn't need to be a 3-ring circus. Showing some funny or interesting (advisable) online videos, bringing in cupcakes, or playing some noncompetitive games would suffice. The adjacent time you prepare a class goal and students ask if you're going to gloat again, tell them not necessarily. It really isn't about the cupcakes, information technology's about the try and learning.

Jonathan C. Erwin, M.A., has been a secondary English teacher, a professional development specialist, a college professor, and the manager of preparation and curriculum for a federally funded character education plan. His previous books include The Classroom of Choice (ASCD, 2004) and Inspiring the Best in Students (ASCD, 2010). Jon is currently an independent educational consultant, a senior faculty fellow member at the William Glasser Institute, and a trained HealthRhythms facilitator. Jon'due south work focuses on providing research-based approaches to didactics, managing, counseling, and training that appeal to people's intrinsic motivations and assist children, adolescents, and adults develop physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. A musician and martial arts enthusiast, Jon has earned a second degree blackness belt in karate and a starting time degree blackness belt in Tae Kwon Do. He lives in western New York.

Jonathan Erwin is the author ofThe SEL Solution: Integrate Social and Emotional Learning into Your Curriculum and Build a Caring Climate for All.

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