Somehow, knowing others have found a pathway of healing and resilience after disaster gives me the energy I need to rise out of these current circumstances and forge forward with our students in my wake, carried on by the force of my will and a toolkit of good evidence-based strategies.
Having a classroom built on trusting relationships that accepted that failure could be a part of learning led all of us to be more vulnerable and to take more risks. And this, in turn, led me to feel more comfortable letting go of more control to add more joy into the classroom.
The Responsive Classroom approach reaches far beyond the old perception of social and emotional curriculums producing “nice” kids in a warm and fuzzy environment. It allows us to build intelligent guidelines for school and to develop classroom practices that are informed by current neuroscience and are relevant to the children of the 21st Century.
There are two integral questions that teachers often overlook but need to ask themselves as they head into the school year: how do I want my classroom to feel and what steps can I take to create this feeling in my learning space?
In part two of the blog series, Dr. Kelleher translates three more of Carl Hendrick's six elements of effective classroom teaching and explains how they can be implemented in a virtual learning environment.