PRINCIPLE#5: The teacher uses an understanding of
individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment
that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and
self-motivation.
KNOWLEDGE
What
really makes a student want to be a student and continue to be a student for
the rest of existence? What type of
reward encourages a learner to strive to reach higher understanding, by her
sole desire to reach a new place? What
kind of learner is motivated by the inner voice? What motivates the inner voice?
Difficult
questions certainly, but essential to the development of a mind in shape for
the rigors of the teaching environment.
The teacher searches deep to answer these questions, and more often than
not is found puzzling over more of the same.
Quizzically, the teacher arrives at an understanding that the means are
varied and complex. For many decades,
people have pondered over the means by which one can motivate another, and for
decades we have developed new ideas about these questions’ answers.
Watson
and Skinner believed in the intrinsic and extrinsic desires for pleasurable
rewards. Displeasureable rewards were
delineated for unwanted or undesired behaviors and positive rewards were
encouraged and offered for positive behaviors.
Behaviors sometimes have nothing to do with the desired affect and so
this one-sided type of management scheme is ill-liked. However, this type of management, while
discouraging more overt behaviors, often times will secondarily influence more
unobservable behaviors that undermine a teacher’s position of influence with
students. Additionally, the students may
inadvertently mimic other students' behaviors and thus internalize more
behaviors that the teacher is attempting to alleviate in the principal student. This type of situation can quickly become a
spiraling effect that has the potential for further disruption of the classroom
system. The delicate balance that is the
classroom environment’s precarious perch at times is compromised by such
mishaps. It is this responsibility that
is converged upon the teacher-as-guide; that is the entity that must seek an
evolving balance for the inherent unbalance.
Ebbinghaus
and Thorndike believed that learning was influenced by the management of
behavior and in so doing, influenced the likes of Vygotsky. This observer concluded that the individual
is influenced by stimuli in the external and internal environments, and it is
these influences that form behavior. In
so concurring with Vygotsky on this point about the environment, I structure
the learning around the students own senses of appropriate and inappropriate
behavior. The middle school child is
able to decode the environment adequately enough as to alight upon the
difference between correct times and incorrect times for behaviors to
occur. It is this intelligence that the
teacher needs to concentrate all management efforts upon. Once these are figuratively, nailed down,
then the teacher is free to concentrate upon the maintenance of a system that
uses these techniques. The students will
monitor their own behaviors thus the teacher is left to engage the students and
monitor the outcome of the behaviors in the classroom environment. If the external environment is calm and
peaceful and conducive to learning, then the students’ internal environment is
able to function more clearly and with less distraction.
In
the classroom I exhibit the following behaviors: I always say please and thank you. I always ask the students to push in their
chairs upon exiting. I always ask the
student to respect themselves and one another.
I always encourage the students to treat each other with fairness, they
in turn encourage each other. I always
require that the students be silent for one minute if they utter the phrase
‘shut-up’ to another, and they encourage the enforcement of this decision. The students reinforce and encourage the
promotion of acceptable social behaviors.
These behaviors in turn reinforce the inner voices’ mediations with the
self. The student is thus able to
concentrate all faculties upon the task of learning and knowing.
In
Six B for instance, this is the sixth grade classroom that I currently teach,
there erupted a problem between two boys; the problem increased to involving
eight boys from three homerooms. I
became fully aware of the situation involving the naming and printing of
material which signified the formation of an elite group of students against a
class officer. When I arrived at an
understanding I reflected on the situation for a time and then alerted the
proper administrative person. The
problem had already arrived at her attention.
I have reflected on the information I had heard about Conflict and
Mediation of Conflict. The result of
this mutual understanding between this administrator and myself are: a series of meetings with all
participants. These meetings utilized
the conflict management procedures that the school staff were familiar with,
and I was the central individual responsible for recording and compiling the
information obtained during these meetings (see Theme Project -- Appendix E).
The overall result has been that the
problem no longer exists between any of the participants, and the two principal
aggressors are slapping each other high-%s and sitting in near proximity’s
without aggression.
I
have conferences with many students on a one-to-one basis and I have been rewarded
with significant results. A studetn who
was placed in my field of responsiblity as I first arrived at the grade six
placement. This student was extremely
unhappy and had just begun his fifth school in as many years. We spoke on the request of the math teacher,
mostly about his poor work ethic, and reasons for emotionally unstable
episodes. As we spoke it became clear
that many of this individuals problem lay in the types of responses that he
receives as a result to his behaviors.
It became clearer to him, it seemed, as we spoke that he simple needed a
bit more clearly for the things that were being said to him. His responses would then be more malleable
with further awareness placed on his skills rather than reactions. Positive signs have emulated from this
student over the course of this year, and I am pleased to say that he is
comfortable and making marks that are significantly improved.
EVIDENCE
Conflict Management documents in the
Appendix E of the Portfolio.
Documents in the Writing Workshop folder.
Art class globe video
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