Week+2+Eron

How do we create spaces for effective learning? How do we foster an environment of personal and communal responsibilities where most people within that space have the ability to be heard, respected and nutured in their learning. Once, not that long ago these questions were not even conceptualised in regard to the teaching of children. There was a classroom set out so that all children faced the //front. This// seating arrangement was conducing to giving ones //undivided attention// to the teacher, sitting up straight, and focusing on a blackboard that the teacher would then refer to or dictate from. There was an automatic expectation that you would **obey** every instruction from the teacher with reverence....and you would do it quietly. The teacher had //legitimate// power over you and your respect, because they were the **Teacher**. Going into that classroom, this teacher may hold coercive power over you even before you had met them merely by reputation...kids talk to kids! Should you even //dare// to deviate from this strict order in the smallest way, the consequences of you non compliance could be very harsh indeed. I am a child of the eighties and yet still have the scar on my hand (and on my heart...) that resulted from my grade one teacher hitting me with a steel ruler for a number of "chatting in class" episodes. If this is an extreme then at least you could be shouted at, ridiculed or sent to the principals office. Meanwhile the rest of the class, unable to continue, becomes totally distracted and moves away from their tasks, usually in mumbled support for the offender. You may be made to write pages of line..." I will not talk in class" or have some other form of **punishment**. The classroom was a place of imposed order and control in the hands of the teacher. The student has no input, and no rights in fact. No oppurtunity to ask questions, take risks, make mistakes and in turn, no way of taking responsibility for their own learning. It's out of their hands because those in **power** know what is best for them. Does this approach work? If we could answer yes, then years of this going on in schools could have been avoided, and none of us would ever have had a terrifying experience in a class, while at school. Raymon Lewis' lecture today and the readings on LMS show us a very different approach to classroom behaviour management. We see a different balance of power spread across the whole class where all members become active in deciding what is appropriate behaviour within the group and in this way as each member becomes responsible for their own behaviour, so they become responsible for the whole group. We all want to belong and be repected and if we all have a //say// and can //contribute// to our environment, we will take responsibility for it, care for it and be actively involved. Teachers will always have a form of power over their students. But how can this power be used for //good// and not for //EVILLLLLL.// Referential power is a form of power that exists within a relationship where the parties in that relationship feel cared for and trusted. Referential power seems to me to be an //influence// rather than an //exerted// power. If a teacher finds time to observe and talk to their students it can become apparent that any behaviour that goes outside the decided realm, can be seen as behaviour and NOT the totality of the student. If we can see that behaviour is an indicator of a whole range of things, we can begin to see the possibility of unacceptable behaviour being the result of another underlying problem, that no amount of shouting at or punishing is going to solve. Surely if we are to maximise the learning potential of ALL students in our care, it is in everyones best interests to put yourself in a position where the student trusts you enough to be involved in their own //rehabilitation// (not the best word so if you have any ideas....) As a community, surely it is in the interest of all its members that a school encourages its students and teachers to engage on this kind of level. On orientation day we were asked to guess how much influence as teachers we had on a students learning outcomes. A story that I was told today illustrates this beautifully. A person told me of someone they went to school with, at secondary level. He was the kind of student we all know. Completely disruptive, unengaged with learning on all levels, disrespectful...we know him..we may have been him. Anyway in about year ten a teacher came along. She spent lots of time with this boy, talking to him, finding out what it was that was stopping him from exploring all his possibilities and from this point he ran with it. He even exelled. A few years later this teacher died, but she had made such a difference to this person that he has ended up naming one of his children after her! How much influence can we as teacher have over our students? This was at a high school where as was stated this kind of environment seems to very much not the norm. I thought this article in a way relevent to this topic...maybe you might too! []