Classroom Reflection Paper

Students in the classroom come from a variety of backgrounds. Their lives are shaped by their families, their communities, but also their peers in school whom they will spend hours a day with throughout their educational career. The ability to form relationships with others, to create lasting friendships that grow and evolve with time, is detrimental to all children and their development. Lacking the ability to do so, whether it is directly because of their conditions or because of how other students perceive them, can dramatically harm them emotionally and mentally.

Adult interaction is the key to measure a child’s development. It helps understand the importance of analysing children’s progress and achievement. All children are different and unique. Interaction helps children build stable, healthy and satisfying relationship and close bonding with their family, friends, classmates and care takers (social development). They learn to cooperate and work as part of team. Interaction creates awareness of a child’s development, strengths, needs, interest and most importantly in identifying areas of improvement, on the basis of which we can decide whether the child is ready for next activity and for

Research by Powers et al (2004) suggests effective teachers reflect on their practice and are mindful of the interaction between the learner, instructional setting, materials, and teaching methods, making adjustments as needed to facilitate learning. The importance of context to learning cannot be overstated; characteristics of the classroom and school can increase the risk for academic and behavioral patterns. Teachers need training in understanding the interaction

I agree with the authors, “It is precisely through information of these kinds of social activities that we identify funds of knowledge that can be used in the classroom to help improve academic development” (Gonzalez, Moll & Amanti, 2005, Pg. 80). We start teaching at the beginning of the school year holding biases towards certain students. Sometimes we heard in the office or teacher lounge that student XYZ is a “nightmare”, we are scared of those students because we are afraid they will ruin our classroom environment. This was my mentality when I first stepped into a classroom as a tutor.

An example would be if you couldn’t talk to anyone for an hour and 30 minutes. You are not being social and that could help certain learners and hurt learns that need to hear something taught to them instead of reading it. Clarisse can definitely be more social than someone in school. She talked to Montag and became really social with him.

Throughout my senior block experience, I have been in three different classrooms, with many different students. Each student possessed unique qualities that have taught me better communication skills and relationship building. Three specific students were John, Jacob, and Justin (for the confidentiality of the students, I have changed their names). These students’ different behaviors have caused an effect on either their learning or social interactions.

Student apathy grows depending on the relationships between teachers and students and student to other students. These relationships prove to have an influence with student apathy at all grade levels, especially elementary. Students either develop closeness or a conflict with their friends and teachers throughout the year. People are social and they prefer to relate to others. Bad relationships hurt the student’s psyche. When conflicts occur, a student’s engagement decline, and they do not feel successful and do not contribute with ideas in the classroom. Teachers, who do not relate and work with their students, fail to keep students interested. Students will not listen to a teacher who is not their friend. When conflict arises with friends, a student will fail to be active with their education. Friction acts as a major distraction for students and increases student apathy (Hosan, Hoglund).

For four long years I felt as if my high school was in a different world in of itself. I had spent that time interacting with an extensive amount of groups, or “cliques”, and getting to know what they do. Through my experiences, I had begun to realize what made this “subculture” high school of sorts run like it did. High school is an incredibly dynamic time for people, and I had changed as a person dramatically from my freshman to senior year. Like many, my freshman year was quite awkward, as remnants of my middle school self remained with me. As time went on, how, I talked to more people and grew out of my passive and shy personality. This did not just randomly happen without reason though. I began to learn and realize who I was and whom I enjoyed talking to in school, which explained why I spent so much time socializing with multiple kinds and groups of people. Everyone’s concept of “normal” was different, and high school was where I learned that lesson and will never forget.

The article, “Creating Birds of Similar Feathers” concerns, issues and topics related to the importance of the teacher-student relationships (TSRs) since it increases students’ performance in class. Therefore, this article relates to teaching and learning because having a good teacher-student relationship is one of the main ingredients in making a classroom well-organized, student-friendly, and comfortable. Without this, teachers would experience difficulty in teaching his or her students as well as for students to learn a lesson if there is lack of communication. From this article, the two points that I found important to the topic are 1) Students learn best and score higher when proper communication and relationship is applied in class; and 2) Teachers should start the first day of class through social activities.

Students vary greatly from one another depending on their age, gender, and socioeconomic class. There are also differences in students in the way they behave and perform tasks in school. Some students are outgoing, while other students are shy. Some children may keep to themselves in class and rarely talk, while others take the role of leaders, asking questions and communicating their ideas freely. Like the teacher I observed for my Education 210 class, I feel the reason for these differences in attitudes and opinions rely a great deal upon the students’ environment. The quieter students may behave the way they do because they are abused at home. Or maybe they simply have parents who reinforce that proper behavior consists of being respectful and quiet in class. The more outgoing students may live in a home environment that encourages them to have confidence in themselves and to ask questions to answer their curiosities.

Though been under influence of Mrs. Jordan on the social sphere of school lessens as students mature, those early lessons still have an effect on how I will interact with others in the

In order to create an environment of respect and rapport, Mrs. Williams greets her students at the door with a smile and inquires how each student is doing. The classroom interactions among the teacher and students are respectful, caring, and sensitive to students as individuals. Mrs. Williams always takes a few minutes for students to share events from their lives to make them feel important.

Teachers that stay abreast of their students’ lack of social experiences will have a definite advantage over those that do not. A teacher will be unable to have an effective learning environment without cultural awareness of the social experiences of their students that fill their classroom. This enables the teacher to present the curriculum in a more practical way, when it takes into consideration the encounters that are diverse to student and applies these elements to learning. Relating to student problems and allowing students to interactively relate to their peers works for the teacher and the student. Meeting cultural learning challenges prepares students for social

It is really amazing how excited students get with the possiblity of using the computer in the classroom to assist them with their lesson. The teacher added that she uses it as a reward system, stating how affective it is in maintaining order and control in the classroom. Students knew how to navigate, go to various websites that were related to the lesson and create a folder in which to put their assignments in.

Walking into the first two weeks of the EDU program I desired to experience what it would be like to be a future educator and have a grasp of how to help the molding of our youth and giving them the possibility to become future leaders. Doctor dresser was able to bring in a Concordia alumni who had just begun to experience his professional education, career and is teaching multiple different grade levels as a young teacher. When he first walked into the classroom my first impressions were that unfortunately he looked very inexperienced and unsure of what was to be expected of the lecture I thought to myself in the position of a younger student in his classroom this is a person I would not take seriously. He then proceeded to communicate