One of the major focuses of my seminar class has been creating an atmosphere of care within the classroom. Throughout the past few weeks, this has been seen through my professors' opening circles, constant encouragement, shared success/failure stories, and appraisal of hard work and effort at the end of a long day. All of these I would consider as examples of both relationship building and resiliency.
Similar to “relationship building” is “relationship skills” which is one of the 5 core Social Emotional Learning (SEL) competences promoted by CASEL. In my SEL elective class, we looked at articles in which relationship skills was exemplified by two specific examples: respectful talk and student buckets. Respectful talk was modeled both by Sherwanda Chism’s use of accountable talk steams and the Edutopia video of School 21 in England which focuses on Oracy in the Classroom. The similar aspect of these two examples was the desire for student voice and discussion and talking steams (I agree, I disagree, While __ was convincing with his/her/their point of _____, I would like to address ____). These steams are important because they build relationships by creating respect between the parties involved. Additionally, student buckets is an idea that promotes affirmations. While this idea of what fills your bucket may appeal to the elementary age kids, with secondary education I believe it is also important; not only for talking steams and seminars to allow students to learn and respect each other, but to additionally affirm each other which could be done verbally or through affirmation submission which could be posted in the room. For example, today during class one of my students had a very insightful thought and I pointed out verbally and by name the students and the excellent point they made. Ultimately, what Bambara argues and design thinking and restorative circles all relate to is, the idea that teachers need to provide students guidance in relationship building skills and opportunities to practice in class. Students may not have been taught how to communicate their feelings, students may not have been taught how to disagree with someone politely, students may not have been taught to affirm someone – it is my role as teachers to TEACH them and give them opportunity to OWN it for themselves.
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AuthorGrowing with students in the garden of life. Archives
August 2020
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