TETA K-12 Committee
Elementary School Interest Chair
1. Create a classroom culture.
Spend the time with your class to create a culture of kindness, respect, and/or whatever other qualities you find important to the work. You may feel overwhelmed with all the curriculum you need to get to throughout the year, but taking the time at the beginning of the year to create relationships between you and your students and between students, the smoother things will go later in the year, especially when it is time to critique each other’s work. Look into The Leader in Me by Stephen R Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens and The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey, and other resources from Franklin Covey.
2. Don’t talk so much.
We have all sat through meeting after meeting where the leader talks and talks on a given topic leaving little to know time for discussion among participants, brainstorming, or reflection. It is frustrating to feel your time to learn is wasting having to listen to someone talk. Consider putting (or finding) the information you want to give your students in another format such as website, book, or video. Instead of explaining it to them yourself, have them go out and find it using one of the resources available.
3. Expand your classroom’s borders.
Instead of staying in your classroom all the time, is there another place on campus you could meet? An outdoor space? The computer lab? The library? Taking your class on a “field trip” of sorts can reinvigorate the class when students are tired of staring at the same four walls.
4. Move things around.
If you classroom typically looks the same at the end of the year as it does right now, consider changing things up once or twice a year. After looking at the same posters and sitting in the same seating arrangement for a few months, students will stop seeing the inspiring messages and helpful tools posted around them. You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel, just move the desks around, switch out the posters, or rotate through exemplary student work. You could even let the students design and create the decorations.