Over the past couple months of being in a classroom, there have been a couple key pieces I've noticed that create a predictable, caring, and positive classroom environment.
One of them being the teacher's attitude; if the teacher is a grump then the students aren't going to feel any motivation to do their work. What's important is to keep a light attitude (varying on age level) where your positivity provides a motivation for them to tackle their work with gusto. Another one is providing an open space for creativity and choice. If the students don't have an outlet for what they want to do, then it's going to be hard getting them interested in the assignments. While the teacher should provide a structure, the student should ultimately be responsible for how their product looks. For strategies relating to diversity, I don't know if I've used any specific ones that have been name, but more so looking at their art work based on their skill rather than a baseline that's set in mind. This, also, applies to the way they solve the creative problem at hand. It all depends on where their skills have developed so far. Otherwise, there is no reason that I should compare their work to their peers just like how I shouldn't compared their work to Da Vinci's work. In past journals, I noticed that I became a lot more aware to my classroom surroundings, student needs, and general self-care when it comes to managing things. I'm still getting used to keeping my head on a swivel in a full classroom, but I am getting better about keeping my eyes peeled for what's going on. With more students open to asking for changes in a project or adaptations, it's definitely been helpful in identifying student needs where they are prevalent. General self-care is still a work in process because while I am aware of things that need to be taken care of, I have little energy to get on top of them right now as my focus needs to remain on getting everything done for school. One of the reflexive practices that helped me assist my students was from when I talked about "Guiding Passion" in journal #2. I was worried about giving the students an opportunity to explore their ideas, and that has helped me develop lessons that leave it open to what they want to do within reason. With the recent "Bag-imals" project, they were able to choose any animal, creature, or mythical creature they wanted so long as they followed the format that was presented. Several that had struggled with being focused before jumped right in to work on these as they couldn't wait to take them home. One the ones that hasn't helped so much was from journal #4. I am still struggling with balancing time and reasoning things with myself. With being sick for 8 weeks and trying to find time to relax, it has been an uphill battle with myself to get things done. I know what I need to do to get on top of things, but I just have had little motivation and drive to start getting them done. Partly because the energy has been low for the entirety of the second half, but also because my brain is starting to sort things into tiers of importance and what needs to be dropped off the train to allow focus on the bigger things. Just like my orchestra teacher said "If you're on a train with a million dollars, don't jump off the train for that one dollar.". Don't bring everything to a halt for one small thing when there's a bigger one that needs your attention. To sum everything up, and refer to the knitting above, every little thing from student teaching has created a woven tapestry that grew every day, every week, and every month. The learning process is never going to end and it is only going to grow longer, but each knit and purl are important to the structure of the weaving. There were times where I needed to redo a row, which were the times when I needed to step back and look at the lesson to see how the students were doing. There were times where I sprinted through the knitting when my hands grew accustomed to the rhythm of the pattern just like when things went by in a flash. It had its learning curves and challenges, and it had moments of realization and ease. Each experience I had was another section made that will continue on for the years to come.
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December 2019
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