Monday, May 12, 2014

Day Six

Standard six of the New Zealand Graduating Teacher Standards states how teachers must develop positive relationships with learners. Today I spent time reflecting on this with specific relation to cultural factors. Firstly I think that if a teacher does not have a positive relationship with their learners, then learning with ultimately not happen. I think learning is something that is actually reliant upon many outside factors. For myself if I am in a setting where I feel anxious, ashamed, minor, disrespected, scared or sad I do not think I would be able to learn effectively. Recently I had an experience in class with my peers where I felt dumb which then resulted with me losing all focus on the lecture to pondering feelings. This personal example goes to show me how powerful connections with other people are. Bad connections and experiences amongst students is something that will always occur but this is where a teacher has opportunity to aid each student. In these sorts of times if a teacher is able to offer security and reassurance then students can regain themselves and learning can continue to occur. From discussion with a couple other teachers it was interesting to listen to one of their keys to this. Within this school there is a number of students who come from difficult backgrounds and therefore can be difficult and hard work to manage. As a teacher with these types of students it would be so easy to not connect with them much. But this can actually be a lead for them to continue their behaviour. To do with this issue my AT said that, your behaviour management can only be as good as your relationship. Therefore there is huge importance for teachers to have good relationships in order to run an effective classroom. One way that these teachers said they do this is by treasuring, looking for and making the most of opportunities to relate, laugh and have fun with these ‘harder’ students. During my time at this school I have observed this teacher/student relationship and it does appear to work effectively. I also think that this type of relationship is key to teacher relationship especially in low decile school environments. Over the next couple weeks I want to experiment with this relationship model to see how effective I personally find it.  

1 comment:

  1. Excellent reflection Ben - I will follow with interest further reflections on this topic....

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