It's Time for a Change

 School is centered around pressure to be considered "smart", to be "successful", to fit in, to get good grades, etc. The way that the education system has been built is around pressuring students to have them fit into the box of what society tells them a good student should be like. It can sometimes feel like you are just a student ID number to your professor, and their only job is to tell you what you need to know to meet the standard of learning so that you can move on to your next step in school or in life. If you make a mistake in school, you are punished or labeled. I want to make sure that as a future educator, I am understanding and transparent, and that I create a classroom environment for my students where it is okay to make mistakes. 

When thinking about how I want to shape my classroom and referring to the six small significant shifts, three stick out to me as important in this process. First, I think it would be important to co-author a mission statement. This would be important because it would allow my students to feel that they had a hand in the direction of where our class was headed, and that it wasn't just me running the show. If they feel responsible in the mission statement, they will be more likely to follow the class culture that we want to create and make a better learning environment all around. 

Secondly, I want to be able to have my students and I learn from our mistakes by exploring them together. I want to make an effort to not stigmatize mistakes or the students who make them, and instead use those mistakes as an opportunity for all of us to learn. I do not want my students to feel punished for their mistakes, but instead excited to learn from them and move forward with their learning. 

Third, I think it would be very important to make the learning process as transparent as possible. In class, it can be frustrating to not know what direction you are headed or what you are doing. As an athlete, it was frustrating for me to not know what the structure of practice would be like, or what was coming next. I would always find myself wondering things like, "are we going to have condition after this? I wonder if it will be hard" instead of focusing on the drills at hand. I don't want this to be the case for my students - I want them to know where we are, where we are going, and what is ahead so that they can plan accordingly and communicate their needs to me as learners. 

Overall, like Jeff said, I think the most important thing is that we love our students as much as we possibly can. Showing our students that we love and care about them is the most effective thing we can do as teachers, and I believe once we do this, the rest will fall into place (hopefully).