JARRETT M. BELL

A classroom, like other units such as a family or business, has its own ecosystem, where every living thing makes up the whole, and is interconnected. Within these units, the goal is always the same: to have its members make calculated risks for growth.

This system’s culture is a great indicator of the health of that ecosystem. Humanity is wired to be conservative, and in each of these different ecosystem units mentioned. Without healthy risk taking, information received from students is filtered.

In order for this growth to happen, a few things need to be established: Create an ownership mentality, foster student voice, learn by doing, and developing growth mindsets. These are both underlined with the simple belief that everyone has a story, and each of those stories is worth telling.

In order to appeal to an issue, problem, or skill to be learned, we must humanize that issue by connecting to an individual, a real person. By doing this we capture the heart of true creation: the ability to organize elements to construct something that didn’t exist prior. If I as a teacher, dare students to take risks, to think about abstract ideas, practice with concepts outside of their comfort zone, and push themselves, they must first have a great stake or investment of success in the organization itself. This is established through classroom meetings, joint creation of rules, and student choice in the learning process and appropriate discipline. Our classroom needs a vision for what we want to be, goals for improvement and regular overlapping discussions of what is working and what is not. The essence of teaching is transforming input to output.

After this is established, I urge the student’s story by finding their voice, particularly in the writing process. In my classroom, we lead by example, which starts with me. I need the humility to be vulnerable, and show my own story, my own art, and my own hardships if I expect my students to the same. For me, writing always begins with mastery of the personal narrative in the revision process. American transcendentalists spoke at length about the need to grasp the past in order to understand our future. It is vital that students have a high levels of self efficacy, the belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. If we can foster a community of risk taking, trust, and safety in vulnerability, we can write.

I am a firm believer that we learn best by doing. In this I apply most to Edgar Dale’s Learning pyramid. Because I want to teach upper grades, we often work with abstract concepts such as negative integers, advanced parts of speech, applications of gravity, implications of world economics, etc. Because concrete “doing” hands on lessons are often limited because of these abstract concepts, one of the best ways of engaging students is the frequent use of student think-pair-shares. Engaging students in frequent dialogue in the rich, academic language, text, and audiovisual stimulus of the material will lead to greater learning. 

Lastly, it is vital that students gain an appropriate growth mindset, not a fixed one, based on the work and research of Carol Dweck. This is the idea that success is based on skill mastery, not inteligence or natural ability. Challenges are embraces as opportunities for growth, we persist in the face of those challenges, and effort is a path to the mastery of those skills.