When visiting teachers or parents enter creative teacher’s classrooms they are impressed with the quality of the work that the students have achieved and with the ability of students to stay focussed on tasks.
'Thirty plus students all appear fully occupied by a range of different activities. Some are busy on language tasks other are completing research tasks. Some are busy on a group art project while others are making use of two computers in the corner of the room. Others are quietly reading or discussing things in groups. A small group of students are undertaking a science experiment with the teacher. When she excuses herself to talk to visitors they continue without her.
There is no fuss and the overall atmosphere is one of purposeful activity and fun and the majority of talk is relevant to tasks at hand.
To complete the picture the student bookwork on display is of a high standard and very well presented. The walls reflect a range of topics, learning areas and impressive art. A feature of the environment is the emphasis on defining goals and processes used by the students.
The teacher's white and black boards provide guidelines and expectations across all areas of the curriculum.'
This is indeed a magic experience particularly for some visiting teachers whose own students can neither produce such quality work nor stay on task. While such a visit can be inspiring it can equally also be depressing. 'I could never do that- my students don't have the skills to work so purposefully.'
It is important to realise all learning is a developmental process.
Visiting other classrooms either in your own school, or elsewhere, is an important learning experience. To be of use teachers need help to interpret what they are seeing and to understand that achieving quality work is a developmental process.
Learning is journey from Novice to Expert
In any learning experience people go through stages from novice to expert and to achieve expertise teachers needs personalised assistance. This understanding is too often taken for granted.
Behind the scenes.
Teachers visiting too often see only the finished products and fail to appreciate the hard work that has gone on behind the scenes. It all looks deceptively easy.
Often the teachers involved have themselves forgotten the early steps they had to grow through to achieve what they themselves now take for granted.
In most cases confidence has been gained by working with others and is easiest when the whole school focussed on a shared vision and expectations.
Learning and Leading philosophy
Our logo represents our vision of learning and teaching for the 21stC. The lower left of our triangle represents the creativity of the 60/70s, the lower right the discipline of traditional teaching and the top the best of both worlds. We believe where this philosophy is being put into practice students achieve far more than is often currently expected. Classroom management is a 'top of the triangle' issue.
Freedom within discipline
The issue of freedom and assistance is an important one. Today's students need, rather than more freedom, strategies and discipline to apply themselves so they can achieve quality learning. Self-esteem we believe is a product of real achievement not just having a good time. The ideal is to create a friendly environment for hard work.
We need high expectations
Students respect teachers who hold high expectations for them. They also need teachers who are organised enough to be able to provide them with appropriate help and strategies required for them to achieve quality work and behaviour.
Poor teaching is too often poor management!
Without clear routines and organisations too many teachers fall back on impulsive and emotional responses which make things worse. Clear organisations paradoxically allow teachers to respond to the spontaneous and unpredictable events. Such organisations allow teachers to focus on a particular group while other work independently. Clear expectations also allow students the confidence to take the risks so necessary for learning
I would caution student teachers always to be flexible with kids, but not to leave with no structure, because many times we are the only structure, the only model, these kids have'
Kouzes and Posner.
The paradox of teaching.
The paradox is that good classroom management makes personal teaching possible, for it not only keeps students on task but also frees the teacher to provide the personal help students need.
Good class management provides an opportunity to establish the warm relationships teachers need to assist students. Once classroom procedures and expectations are established the teacher is able to pay less attention to it is able to get closer to each student. Through this students gain the help for them gain personal success and equally for teachers in the process to enjoy teaching.
Some initial fuss often reduces subsequent fuss: that some apparently complicated initial procedures actually simplify procedures in the long run; that formal routines free the teacher for closer relationships
Michael Marland
The future is living with paradox
These insights about creating learning environments are not restricted to teaching but are common to all healthy organisations. Charles Handy, a business 'guru' in his book the Empty Raincoat, suggests the future is the ability to live with paradox.
He says that people need:
- Freedom and structure
- Be apart of a team but able to do their own work
- Discretion but within clear expectations
- To take risks but only if they feel trusted
- Flexible but coherent organisations
- To feel they have power but also the support of others
- Responsibility but also appropriate help
- To be seen as individuals but also to feel part of a shared sense of purpose
Creating these conditions in our classrooms is the challenge.
Unity and harmony
A sense of class unity is gained when everyone is clear about expectations and this sense of unity allows students to gain a sense of belonging to the school. The harmony created frees energy, which can then be devoted to rewarding tasks.
'If there is any other situation as fraught with danger for mental health as that of a class held rigid by fear, it is the class exposed to the anxieties engendered by unlimited freedom or undefined freedom. There is nothing so terrifying to the immature human being as a completely unstructured situation. Without a recognisable structure they feel the teacher has abandoned them - and so he has - to their own impulses, all of which are by no means always constructive.
Mental Health in the classroom B Morris
Creativity and discipline
Creative classrooms do not give children freedom any more than creative bedtime hours. When classroom environments are always changing, always haphazard, this not only puts teachers into positions of choreographing; it also put children into the position of waiting for their teachers changing agendas.
The test of a well organised classroom is to observe what happens when the teacher leaves the room unattended!
It is significant to realise that the most creative environments inn our society are not the ever changing ones. The artists studio, the researchers laboratory, the scholars library are each deliberately keep simple so as to support the complexities of the work in progress. They are deliberately kept predicable so the unpredictable can happen.
Lucy Calkins, 'Lessons from a child.'
Even one of New Zealand's most creative teachers of the 50s Sylvia Ashton Warner found students in the USA in the 70s too free!
'Without containment, spontaneity, exultation and freedom of mind could seep into license and anarchy, where as the feeling that his day has shape, a benign routine, helps our child to responsibility and our school to stability.
The word 'freedom' can never be uttered unless accompanied by hand in hand by the word 'responsibility'. It is kinder to keep the lid on a school for a start, lifting it little by little, simultaneously teaching responsibility, until the time come when the lid can cast entirely aside and only two conditions remain freedom and responsibility.
Teacher in America Ashton-Warner
Applying the message to the classroom.
A beginning teacher, or even an experienced teacher starting with a new class, should ensure students are firstly kept busy. For the first few weeks the focus should be on teaching basic skills, establishing procedures and introducing expectations.
Start by building a class culture
Select a task you are confident with to introduce your expectations e.g. drawing a portrait.
Before you start it pays to reflect on what your expectations are. Can you articulate them?
Encourage students to take their time to emphasise you 'expect quality rather than being first finished' for them to 'do their personal best'. Make them 'slow the pace' of their work. Expect 'a little improvement each time' they do a task. Encourage them to 'have a go' and not to give up, to have 'stickability' Display their work with captions that use these value statements. Students as they achieve these small goals will feel good about themselves and being in your class.
These simple phrases are the beginning of your class shared culture.
Use a mix of whole class, group and individual teaching
Whole class teaching is useful for setting the scene at the beginning of the day (or any teaching block) to establishing class goals, and also at the close of any lesson or the day, to reflect on what has been achieved.
Make programme and task details explicit
Details of the day should be on the blackboard or for juniors on task boards. In far too many classrooms these 'scaffolds' are too sketchy to be of much use to provide enough detail for students to refer to.
'All battles are won before they start'
Sun Tzu
Class vision and values
Negotiate with the class what kind of class they want to be. Get them to define the behaviours they think are fair for all. Reward appropriate behaviour when
observed. Develop with them the concept that this is their classroom - and that your role is to hold them to their own expectations
Why have many schools have shortened their lunch hour?
If teachers were honest they might admit that the during the afternoon many students become off task. The mornings are more positive because the language and maths blocks are usually well planned with a mix of class, group and individual tasks. Teachers in these areas usually focus on one group at a time to do focussed or diagnostic teaching. Parent helpers are often used to assist. Expectations are clear to all often on task boards or blackboard.
These expectations should be extended into the afternoon period.
The afternoon programme
The afternoons are often not planned so well. However as students are taught independent reading and research skills in the morning then a similar group organisation and be introduced in the p.m. based around the science, social studies or theme study. These studies can also provide motivation for morning language work and the morning programme can equally introduce skills to use in the afternoon.
A plan for a unit
- Week one, perhaps late in the week, introduce a topic. Complete an introductory activity and from this develop a list of study questions, some tasks to do to explore the topic including ideas for creative activities.
- Week two have prepared a range of group tasks for students to complete based on their ideas but vetted by your judgement. At the beginning of the year the teacher's hand will be a heavy one because students will not as yet have learnt about good questions, nor have much experience about what is possible. As the year progresses the teacher can hand over more and more responsibility. At the beginning of the year tasks also will be simple limited by the skills the students have.
Sort out tasks into four rotating groups:
- A group to work with you - this is your focussed teaching group. The work you introduce will be completed in later groups.
- A second group could be completing a task introduced to whole class in the a.m e.g. rewriting a draft language task.
- You could include an art task- one which they have the skills you have taught them previously
- A final group could be designing the cover for their project following a format you have previously taught in the language block. A small booklet may be an outcome all students complete.
Other possibilities could include using the computer, research reading, etc as you have previously taught the skill.
All tasks should be on the blackboard for student reference
- Week three is time to finish all tasks. Children who need extra help can be given it and others can go on with extension work. Quality work is the message the children have - not rushing to be first finished.
Use the Interactive model in all Learning Areas.
- What are the students questions prior and knowledge. Record and display.
- Plan activities to challenge their thinking
- At the end of the study what have they learned? Display.
When classroom management and organisation routines have been established the magic can begin!
- The students know what to do - and they will get better as the year unfolds.
- You have time to: help, have learning conversations, teach and give feedback, set personalised goals and constantly set higher expectations.
- You can progressively empower students to be in control of their own learning.
- You can progressively increase the intellectual demands on the students
- Students will come to appreciate that it is their job to learn and yours to help.
Teaching is a skilled, complex and demanding art. When it works well it a joy to be both a teacher and a learner. When a learning culture is established competence becomes craftsmanship, joy, and fun for all - and teachers become creative artists. It even begins to looks easy!