HOW DO YOU CREATE A PEACEFUL CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT?

The concept of a peaceful classroom should be desired by every teacher.

The connotation of the word peace brings up images of happiness and an absence of strife and problems.

According to Girard (1995), “A peaceable classroom or school results when the values and skills of cooperation, communication, tolerance, positive emotional expression, and conflict resolution are taught and supported throughout the culture of the school”.

Let us explore some of the practical strategies a teacher can employ to reach these goals.

Show Interest in Your Learners.

• Consider how you greet your students when they enter your class.
• According to Wong & Wong (1998), “Students look to the teacher’s facial expressions and first words to let them know if they should feel invited into the classroom or whether they should feel that they are not welcome”.
• Furthermore, if you are truly interested in having a peaceful classroom, you have to involve your students so that they feel like the peaceful outcome is something that they had a part in creating themselves.
• Start by showing interest in them.

Also Read: Activating Lecture Method of Teaching for Maximum Understanding and Retention.

• Spend about one minute listening to them before you begin the class proceedings.
• Set aside a few minutes at the end of the day or class period for them to talk to you and share what’s happening in their lives.
• Ask questions about their different cultures and allow for student expression as they contribute to individual and group assignments and projects.
• Darling-Hammond (1998) said, “Students don’t generally mind sharing their differences if you have created a climate of fairness and respect. Teachers need to ask sensitive questions, listen carefully to the responses, and be intentionally thoughtful as they evaluate student work, especially when this work is directly related to students’ writing and talking about their interests and experiences”.
• Be sure to think of the class as a group of individuals, not just a group.

Communicate Clearly What You Want and Expect

• Research repeatedly points to student success when teachers clearly communicate what is expected of students.
• To maximize understanding, start by treating all of your students as fairly and consistently as possible.
• Remember that sometimes the planned rules won’t work.
• Teachers need to excel in the areas of adaptability and flexibility.
• They need to be constantly analyzing, reflecting on their practices, assessing the effects of their teaching, and finally refining and improving their instructional strategies to continuously evaluate how students are thinking and understanding in their classes.
• There may be circumstances beyond the teacher’s (or the student’s) control that make it very difficult to follow the everyday rules.
• Working with students of all ages means the teacher will have to be flexible much of the time.

Be Objective, Not Judgmental

• Teachers will have more success with achieving peaceful management outcomes when they learn to be objective rather than judgmental.
• Whenever possible, look at a situation from the student’s perspective. Sometimes, you may miss the most obvious cause of student behaviours, frustrations, or reactions if you jump to a fast conclusion.
• Teachers should take the time to understand before enforcing heavy consequences.
• If the time cannot be taken right away to do so, it may be appropriate to tell the student you want to revisit the situation later, privately, before discussing the consequence.

Let Your Learners See That You Are Human

• One of the most important life skills students can learn is how to make mistakes, identify them as mistakes, and learn from them.
• The teacher can be a powerful ally in learning this life skill.
• The teacher can model how to reflect on work and identify a mistake made.
• Sometimes the mistake is obvious, but other times it is a matter of reflecting on how a better choice could have been made.

Also Read: Retentive memory, Importance and How to Improve Your Retentive Memory as a Student.

• The teacher needs to model how to graciously accept imperfection.
• The students need to see various methods for correcting mistakes, such as apologizing, doing the extra work to redo an activity, and making a plan not to make the same mistakes in the future.
• A great content area to demonstrate these skills is writing.
• Using samples of your writing, model the thinking process behind improving writing when you know a mistake has been made or when your best work is not represented in the finished product.

Spend a Lot of Time Among Your Learners

• Not only does a teacher’s desk provide a barrier between students and the teacher, but it can also send the message that the teacher does not take an active interest in how students are processing the learning of content if the teacher is constantly seated at his/her desk during all instructional time.
• The most effective teachers spend a lot of time among the students while learning is taking place.
• While presenting information, the teacher can walk around to check that students are taking the right notes and recording the most important things.
• During independent work, the teacher monitors progress.
• During group activities, the teacher monitors tasks.
• The teacher is actively encouraging, directing, and adjusting the lesson according to how the students are working.
• In these efforts, the teacher is actively pursuing peaceful management and flow through activities in the classroom.

Carry Your Learners Along During the Lesson

• Teachers are constantly pressured to meet the rising demands of content standards and pacing charts.
• Therefore, they are often tempted to rush through their content in an attempt to reach all of their goals.
• When students are confused or do not understand, the teacher may not even be aware of it until final assessments are made.
• This is frustrating for students and teachers.
• The frustration can lead to behavioural problems.
• Therefore, a teacher’s lessons will run more smoothly if he/she can find ways to get students to connect with the lesson from the beginning.
• According to Diaz-Rico & Weed (2002), “Students engage in learning when they recognize a connection between what they know and the learning experience”.
• At the beginning of each lesson, the teacher will need to assess a student’s prior knowledge, or what he/she already know about the coming subject.
• This not only guides the teacher’s instruction, but it also facilitates the students’ access to their knowledge.

Also Read: Essential steps to reclaiming or improving your memory and restoring the health of your brain.

• The teacher then provides any background knowledge needed. When there is very little prior knowledge, the teacher uses scaffolding techniques to help students build schemas, that is, construct a framework of concepts that show the relationships of old and new learning and how they are connected.
• This whole process allows students to connect what they already know with what they are going to learn for true learning associations.
• During lessons, preplanned opportunities can be given to the students as much choice as possible.
• When they are finished with a task, provide avenues to plan what they will work on next.
• When possible, put a list of activities on the board so that the students know what’s expected for the day.

Give Students a Purpose for Everything they will be Learning.

• Ineffective teachers keep the assignment a mystery until they announce that it has to be done and only teach according to the textbook rather than creating dynamic learning experiences surrounding the content standards with all the resources available.
• Teachers easily tell students what they need to learn, but not always why they need to learn it.
• According to Wong & Wong (1998), “when a teacher actively pursues positive results regarding student success, the odds increase that this will be the result”.
• If a teacher is striving to achieve a positive room environment, then the teacher must celebrate with students when they have achieved it.
• Keeping open discussion on good attitudes (both teacher and students), praising when deserved, and positive reinforcement all around can work wonders.
• Keep in mind that simple praise can become counterproductive and is not enough to create a positive learning environment.
• The result comes from a teacher who prepares purposefully, praises deserving students, positively reinforces at key moments, and maintains an upbeat attitude through the tedious parts of each school day.
• This teacher demonstrates to students the value of such things as effort, hard work, kindness, and dependability above and beyond simply desiring correct and neat work.

Join Enlighten Knowledge WhatsApp Channel.

Join Enlighten Knowledge Telegram platform.

Follow our:

FACEBOOK PAGE.

About Author

Enlighten

See author's posts