Learning Environments

Standard #3: Learning Environments

The teacher works with others to create environments that support individual and

collaborative learning, and that encourage positive social interaction, active

engagement in learning, and self-motivation.

I have the good fortune to be one of the teachers whose teaching goals are

supported by the philosophy and actions of my school district. As a teacher I want

to encourage my students to take ownership of their education, be creative and

innovative with my methods of teaching, and make lessons and units relate to the

students’ life experiences.

My principal has shared with me that he believes teachers are most effective

and engaged when they have the freedom to create and teach in the way they most

believe in and are passionate about. This is also true for students. Perrone (1991)

states, “And if learning is to be connected to student intentions and needs, as it

should be, the curriculum will require a high level of flexibility, situated in relation

to particular students” (p. 13). A truly collaborative environment will result in

lessons and activities that you can’t predict beforehand, as the students’ voices play

a big role in what will be happening in the class. In our school, every student has an

Independent Learning Project (ILP) that they are working on. The ILP is a project

the student determines and carries out independently. By the time students are

seniors in high school they are pretty independent in doing this. However, with the

younger students the teacher assists them a bit more. The student tells the teacher

what they want to learn and they create goals to reach, standards they will meet,
strengths that will help them accomplish their learning, areas of growth that the

project will allow, and what type of evaluation they will use. Even the primary

elementary students have clear ideas about what they want to accomplish and it is

really neat to see what ideas they develop. One of my roles as a teacher is to partner

with them and help these students clarify and organize their ideas. For the ILPs,

students can learn about anything; it does not have to be a specific content area. My

elementary students have chosen ILPs such as learning to tie their shoes, learning

about and teaching the class proper nutrition habits, and designing and building

recycling boxes for the school. These artifacts came from a 3rd grade student’s ILP;

he said he wanted to implement recycling in our school. From there he and I

worked together to create his goals, his project, and his evaluation using the

attached form. He then researched recycling by reading articles and watching

videos. Then he built and decorated the two recycling bins for our school. Lastly, he

gave a presentation to the class to both teach them about recycling and encourage

them to recycle; we still use the bins he made four years ago. The students are very

engaged with their work on their ILPs, often talking about what their next one will

be before they have completed the ones they are currently working on.

As a senior undergraduate student I found myself still reading a lot of other

people’s viewpoints on my area of study and being asked on tests what those

viewpoints were. I went to one of my professors and asked why we didn’t spend

more time looking at primary sources and formulating our own ideas. His response

was that I, as well as the other students, were not ready to look at these types of

materials for ourselves. I thought to myself, “This is my seventeenth year of school”;

the reality is that no professor or teacher can stop students from thinking for

themselves. However, teachers can be a roadblock to this process or set up a

classroom that encourages a constructivist model. Speaking of constructivism,

Tobin (1993) writes:

Student thinking needs to be stimulated by providing time to think: students

need time to engage in the processes required to evaluate the adequacy of

specific knowledge, make connections, clarify, elaborate, build alternatives,

and speculate. (p.11)

At a past in-service I attended, there was a man who taught the teachers how

to build underwater remote-control vehicles using PVC pipes and floaties; there

were some basic concepts provided, but no specific directions on how the machines

had to be made. I took what I had learned and made the underwater submarines

with the students. By not giving specifics step-by-step instructions on how exactly

to build the machine it allowed students to creatively branch off with many different

ideas. Students tried ideas that failed, while finding methods that none of the adults

had considered. If a teacher gives exact instructions on what and how to build the

end result will be ten of the exact same machine. My goal is not to create a

classroom of students who think, act, and know exactly the same as I do. It is my

hope that my students are learning to think for themselves. To accomplish this I try

to provide opportunities for students to acquire some information from the teacher,

some from other students, and mixing it together with their own way of thinking,

come up with knowledge that will be their own and real.

much less, as they have something they are wanting to accomplish and there is less

time for frivolous goofing off. Fields et al. (2014) state:

A rich learning environment means many opportunities for children to

explore and investigate . . . When we encourage productive activity, there is

less time left for unproductive behaviors, which are often a source of conflict

in groups of children. . . If we create situations where they are intrigued and

investigating and experimenting, they are usually unable to get into a

different kind of mischief. (p. 88)

Engaging lessons, coupled with a positive learning environment, sets the tone for

the nature of the classroom and drastically removes much of the behavioral issues.

Speaking to the importance of creating a positive learning environment Charles

(1996) says:

A good classroom climate is warm, supportive, and pleasant. It is friendly

and filled with good nature and acceptance. It is encouraging, helpful, and

nonthreatening. Such a climate encourages productive work and promotes a

sense of enjoyment and accomplishment. (p. 210)

When a teacher is enjoying himself and engaged in the work, students are hard-

pressed to go against that atmosphere, and more often than not will happily engage

in the task at hand. That being said, no matter how positive the classroom or good

the lesson, the possibility for misbehavior and poor attitude can never completely

be removed.
 I worked with a family that has since moved out of the village; it seemed that

no matter how positive I was, how supportive I tried to be, or how engaged the

students were, at some point there would be issues. The most glaring example that

comes to mind involved a student club- Alaska Native Dance Club. The entire family

cared a lot about their native dance traditions; two of the students of this family,

along with another student, started after school Alaska Native Dance Club, which I

oversaw. Due to the family’s difficult personalities, the end result was the club being

cancelled after the community requested a whole-community meeting at the school.

A teacher has to realize that sometimes no matter how well they prepare or how

great an effort they put forth, others have attitudes and behaviors that they bring to

the table as well; you cannot control the choices of other people.

At the current time, one of my biggest focuses is on implementing more

within my classroom is project-based learning. I have attended various district

trainings regarding project-based learning, as well as done personal reading on the

topic. For me, project-based learning consists of two areas- focusing on larger

projects with content areas embedded within rather than just on one specific

content area and relating projects to everyday life experiences. Lesh (2011) states

teachers should “provide students with a deeper, more rigorous learning experience

and establish within those students a set of lifelong skills easily transferable to the

world of work” (p. 5). For example, this past year I started a project entitled “How

can we help a new playground get built at our school?” Some of the lessons the

students did was writing emails to the superintendent, helping research and pick

out the equipment, and designing the playground layout. By writing emails back
and forth with the superintendent, students are practicing a lifelong skill. Moline

(1995) posits that a great deal of time in school is spent reading and writing stories,

poems, and various narratives, whereas the majority of what we deal with as adults

is informational text (p. 15).

As a teacher I want all my students to be independent thinkers. It is my job

as a teacher to teach accurate information and provide an environment where

students have the opportunity to learn in a variety of ways. It is the job of my

students to care about and seek knowledge and truth, and learn how to find them.

Piaget states, as quoted in Jervis and Tobier (1988):

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and

women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what

other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive

and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything

they are offered.

Especially with the younger students it is important that teachers encourage them

that it is okay to have a voice in their education, to contribute to their learning, and

think independently.
 References

Charles, C.M. (1996). Building classroom discipline (5th ed.). Longman Publishers

Fields, M.V., Meritt, P.A., & Fields, D.M. (2014). Constructive guidance and discipline.

Pearson.

Jervis, K. & Tobier, A. (1988). Education for democracy: Proceedings from the

Cambridge School Conference on Progressive Education, October,1987.

Cambridge School.

Lesh, B.A. (2011) “Why won’t you just tell us the answer?”. Stenhouse Publishers.

Moline, S. (1995). I see what you mean (2nd ed.). Stenhouse Publishers.

Perrone, V. (1991). A letter to teachers: Reflections on schooling and the art of

teaching. Josey Bass Publishing.

Tobin, K. (Ed.). (1993). The practice of constructivism in science education. American

Association for the Advancement of Science Press.