Whose Classroom Is This Anyway?
Did the title of this blog entry capture your attention? I believe as educators, we need to be able to answer this basic, philosophical question as it provides the construct of how we approach educating students.
In a continuous improvement, quality-focused classroom- the resounding answer to this question is- THIS IS THE STUDENTS' CLASSROOM!!! (<-- sorry for shouting :-) The best way to help students take ownership, accountability and responsibility for their own learning is to make the classroom theirs. This is where talk is cheap... we can't just say we are student-centered- we have to model it. How do we do this? We do this through involving students in the components of the continuous improvement classroom:
- classroom mission statements (individual personal mission statements too!)
- classroom SMART goals (individual SMART goals too!)
- individual student data folders (tracking individual progress on SMART goals)
- classroom meetings (taking time to revisit the classroom data center, mission, goals, etc.)
I began the blog with the question, "whose classroom is this anyway?" I will end with these questions- Whose school is this? Whose school district is this? Whose educational system is this?
How would you answer these questions? Share your comments today!
Comments
ITS OUR CLASSROOM! (sorry for shouting)
Talk about the positive energy. I just finished the lesson on developing our classroom mission statement. This is the third installment of the process, and will probably take a week.
We started with brainstorming ideas individually about mission statements, and then developed group ideas. We looked at the big rocks of Room 15.
Our big rocks:
Math
Learn
Room 15 (students & teacher)
Fun
Respect
College
Working/Job
Here are the first round of mission statements...(this is really fun!)
"Our Mission is to pass Algebra this year"
"We the students of Room 15 want to learn Algebra and have fun!"
"We the students of Room 15 are trying to learn math to educate ourselves so we can go to college to further our understanding in mathematics."
"We the students of Room 15 are here to understand math and learn algebra, respect, and have fun!"
"With a positive attitude, we the students of Room 15 serve ourselves and the community by achieving a higher understanding of math to better our future."
"We the students of Room 15 want to learn skills about Algebra that will help us later in life."
We are now looking on how to revise the current statements in the rest of the classes, eventually, we will all have had a chance to get input into the classroom mission.
Learning is happening, in OUR classroom!
Scott McGhee
Classroom Teacher
Graham Middle School
Mountain View, CA
Posted by: Scott McGhee | October 26, 2006 11:54 AM
Scott,
U Da Man! It's great hearing about how quality and continuous improvement is really impacting your classroom. Your comments help inspire others and cause us all to ask- "Whose classroom is this?"
Keep up the good work and continue sharing your progress with us!
Jay
Posted by: Jay Marino | October 26, 2006 01:14 PM