What Makes a Good Classroom?

Yesterday we discussed in class what makes a truly engaging and inviting classroom for children, and how rules can be a part of that. Each of us brought in the classroom rules from our field experience, and discussed whether those rules seemed appropriate and helpful in the classroom setting. Together we discussed what would make a classroom unhappy for children, and what things would create an inviting environment for them. Then, as groups, we created a set of five rules that would apply three important concepts: compassion, caring, and the common good. The five rules that my group came up with were:

• Be respectful
• Be reliable
• Follow directions
• Give your best effort
• Stop, think, react

Once all of our groups had shared our rules, we realized that one of the most common themes throughout them was respect. This led to a discussion about what respect really means, and how we can define it. We also discussed how, in the classroom, it's important to have students help define the meaning of respect. Some of the aspects of respect that we discussed were that respect is actions and behavior that you can be proud of, accepting responsibility and learning from your mistakes, letting people be people and allowing mistakes, and acknowledging and accepting differences among people.

For me, this time in class really clarified how to go about the process of including students in the making of classroom rules.