Rebecca Fundator SPED 405 Dr.

Monda-Amaya 23 November, 2012 Assignment B Based on my philosophy of teaching, a key principle of a successful educational experience for students is for a teacher to collaborate with students to develop a classroom environment that is conducive to intellectual stimulation and growth. However, students do not necessarily intellectually develop to their maximum potential if their learning environment does not have a purposeful and established set of classroom expectations. In my teaching career, I plan on maintaining high (but appropriate) expectations for students; however, in order to set up my classroom in a way where all students can live up to the established expectations and rules, I need to begin the school year by clearly stating (and collaborating with students to develop) a few non-negotiable rules that will create the most positive and productive learning environment for a diverse class of students. Rather than composing a massive list of frivolous rules for my students to follow in my class, it is imperative to determine the general expectations for my students. In order to do so, I must reflect on my teaching philosophy since it emphasizes what I consider to be the fundamentals of a purposeful education. I believe that teaching service and community in conjunction with ones content area, especially Social Sciences and English Language Arts, is vitally important because instilling the desire and tools to improve the world that students live in adds a clear purpose, responsibility, and autonomy to their educational experience. Therefore, my general expectations of every individual is to not only take advantage of every opportunity in my class to cultivate the necessary cognitive and abstract thinking skills to be successful in my
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ELA class, but moreover to become successful and productive individuals in their future schools and employment. Furthermore, by specifying that one of my expectations of each individual is to be respectful, mindful, and empathetic of others needs and feelings, I aim to sustain the education that my students garner in my class and apply it to their future jobs and, ideally, community to improve the world for themselves and others. After carefully considering the general expectations I have for the students in my classes, I need to directly write out my non-negotiable rules, which are listed and justified below. Rule One: Be kind and respectful to everyone in the class, including your teacher(s). This rule is clearly very general, which can be problematic because students may question what respectful means or have differing opinions about respect and kindness based on their previous experiences. Therefore, I believe that an effective way to reduce the subjectivity of this key rule in my classroom is to have my students help me create a list of principles underlying this rule. For example, students can list what cases fall under this rule, such as: this includes listening and responding respectfully to others students (and teachers) opinions, ideas, directions, etc; this includes not touching other students during class time; this includes no name-calling or bullying and so on. By establishing a few central rules for the classroom and then having students collaborate and contribute to the standards and expectations that fall under that rule, they are given the chance to take co-ownership of the classroom and how it is conducted. This is imperative because if students are included in decision making about how their classroom will function, they are more likely to not only remember the rules (because they helped set them up), they will also want to help me, the teacher, enforce the rules, and ultimately feel a sense of report with me for giving them the chance to co-operate the environment they learn in.

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Rule Two: Try your best to make limited and important class time as productive as possible. Again, this rule is meant to be general because I want to collaborate with students as to what this means and what some expectations that fall under this should be in my classroom. For example, I may say this means that everyone should get to class on time and stay on-task during class (i.e. no talking to friends while the teacher is talking). Whereas students may elaborate that this also means staying off technological devices (unless they are looking up a question posed during class discussion and ask the teachers permission). This also means turning in assignments on time. This means coming to class prepared with my necessary class materials and so forth. Hopefully, as the teacher, I can facilitate this activity of designing the parameters of this rule in a positive way that encourages students to be interested in the curriculum of my class by posing another element of this rule to be reflect on why this lessons educational experience is important and how I can apply what I learned from this lesson in the future. By setting up the class curriculum with the idea that every lesson can be tied to something that students can use in the future, students will ideally want to discern how this lesson is applicable in the future, making their English Language Arts curriculum meaningful and useful. Again, while this is a general rule, building rapport with students by defining and designing the expectations that fall under this rule is beneficial to creating a productive, cooperative learning environment. Furthermore, some form of this should be a rule in every class because ultimately, a school is an environment intended to produce and enhance knowledge in students and give them access to tools they can use to learn on their own. Therefore, there should be a rule that focuses on the teachers expectations of how she expects her students to interact with the curriculum learned in her class.

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Rule Three: There is absolutely no plagiarizing, cheating, or stealing someone elses intellectual property in this class. Every assignment that you complete in this class should be your work because there is no need for cheating! In the same vein as the previous two rules in my classroom, we will discuss what plagiarism is as a class, as well as the difference between collaboration and stealing someone elses ideas. I want my students to understand that this does not mean that they cannot work with others on assignments because collaboration on designated assignments, which will be many in my class, is wonderful and encouraged to facilitate ideas and develop good interpersonal skills in educational situations. Additionally, this rule is incredibly important because students should not only feel that their teacher wants to hear their (and only their) voice and ideas on summative assessments, but the notion that cheating is simply unacceptable, and they will undoubtedly need to be aware of the severity of failing to follow this universal educational rule in the future. Furthermore, if a serious rule such as this one is explained and discussed in a meaningful but non-accusatory way, students will be more likely to respect and follow the rule. Overall, these three rules, though broad, are extremely useful when establishing my expectations of my students. Although the rules are important, what I have discovered is more important is how the rules are presented to my students. By encouraging students to collaborate and contribute to the necessary conversation about classroom rules and expectations, students are given a chance to share ownership of the classroom since they helped decide how the class should be regulated. Furthermore, by feeling ownership over their classroom, students will be more likely to help run the class as they co-designed it rather than break the rules. Additionally, these expectations are set up as ways to succeed in my classroom as opposed to rules not to break unless you want a punishment; this will hopefully create the sense of a democratic environment
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where expectations are as reasonably high as the outcomes for student learning and appreciation for the curriculum.

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