Establishing a Positive Classroom Climate

We've all been in negative situations. In my opinion, I can't say that anyone could truthfully claim that they have enjoyed those situations. Negativity contributes to stress, pressure, feelings of low self-esteem, and anxiety. It's hardly logical to assume that such a situation or environment could contribute meaningfully to successful learning.

Taking ownership of your classroom can be an incredibly overwhelming thing. You may have many personal objectives you want to accomplish: Stylish decorations/design, ongoing collaborative spaces,  and hundreds of other things you've picked up from Pinterest but perhaps lack the focus, or inherent crafty talent, to execute. I've struggled with simply putting my classroom rules on the wall because I can't cut paper in a straight line, even after I've drawn on it with a ruler, or post things to the wall without constantly assessing my crooked scissor-craft and general inability to make things totally perfectly level.

At the end of the day, these things don't really matter. What you want to get on the wall, the things you want to put into motion, will get done. What is perhaps more crucial in the first few days of class with new students, is establishing things that aren't exactly visible.

For example: A positive classroom climate. Like the neat colored paper accents you wanted to attach to each of your classroom rule posters, it's not necessary to demand a positive climate all at once. It is an ongoing, consistently demonstrated concept that takes shape with a few guiding practices.

Thoughtful Classroom Setup and Structure

My school discourages table/desk arrangement in rows, except for tests. I myself find it hard to manage a classroom of 35 students in this arrangement as well. Because teaching English requires a lot of communication and collaboration, a project-type setup was where I eventually landed with my classroom design. Dividing a class into groups of six makes classroom activities more manageable, and puts students in a position where they can direct their own work.

This year, I decided to cash in a bunch of Amazon credit by purchasing educational "manipulatives." Additionally, I inherited a lot of books and literature readers from former colleagues, and decided to create activity stations in my classroom with all my new-ish materials.

This has been working really well. The first day of class, when our activities ended a few minutes early, rather than have students pull out their electronics and kill time before the bell rang, I told them to explore their classroom space-- The Reading Center, the Art Center, the Game Center (little puzzles and travel games), and -- my personal favorite-- the Doodle Center. This is what I did with an extra white board that usually sat blank for the school year--now it's full of student artwork, magnetic poetry creations (some needing the inevitable censorship), and a weekly Brain Bender/Riddle that my students have begun racing to decipher. Furthermore, setting up my classroom will self-directed activities available to students in their down-time silently reinforces my no-electronics-for-personal-purposes rule.

Values-Based Behavior Management

Using my school's own mission and values as a springboard, I have developed something of a thread between what we might consider ethical buzzwords-- "Honesty," "Responsibility," etc.-- to my classroom rules and policies. I reworked classroom rules from previous years to simply each one that related to a School Core Value. When it was time to discuss rewards and consequences with each of my classes, I generated a student-led team (called the "Classroom Conduct Committee") to create a list of examples of unacceptable behavior, and their attendant consequences. Additionally, the Committee was asked to create a list of rewards the class could enjoy after completing a period of time of showing excellent behavior and creating strong work. The results have been mixed--I'm already evaluating what I can do to strengthen the activity in the coming years--but I have noticed right away how much handing over this responsibility to a student-led "organization" eased tensions in the classroom regarding these issues. For one, I believe the students value having their voices heard, and are interested in being part of a classroom that takes their input and ideas into consideration-- or even a classroom that requires their ideas specifically in order to work.

As a safeguard, I created a student-teacher contract that outlined the school's standard policies of behavior and consequences, to be reviewed and signed by each student, and their parents. This same contract was developed and given to all students, putting them at a level of equal expectation. For my part, it also showed that I was aware of and understood the school policies, which is something not many students expect from foreign teachers in my situation. Even though it may sound harsh (it certainly did when I was writing it)--I think the effect this contract has had on how students approach my classroom and our activities in it has been largely positive. They see I have the same standards and expectations as their native Vietnamese teachers, placing myself on an equal level in that regard. Once the heavy stuff is taken care of, they can decide specifically what types of conduct and behavior or intolerable for their class, and how they would like to be rewarded for positive behavior.

Honoring Student Experience

As I have mentioned, an English classroom--especially an ESL/EFL classroom--relies heavily on student input, sharing, and collaboration. There is nothing that scares me more as an educator than having a silent classroom during my lessons; it reflects to me disinterest/ disengagement on the students' part with the course material, and my inability as a teacher to design a lesson that appeals to them.

In this instance, I am the foreigner, I am the person in a country not my own, among a culture not my own. I rely very heavily on my students to help me understand some of the inner-workings of the culture I live in, what is appropriate/rude, what this or that facial expression means, and so on.  Their experiences are part of my education. As such, I absolutely want them to share anything and everything they can--I want them to be able to express themselves and to think more deeply and critically about important issues and topics. The well of student experience, from talented artists to budding app-designers to the academic-types, and the literary-types, is what I need to get my classroom up and running.

What I can do to strengthen this aspect of creating positive classroom climate is try to find more classroom-reflective texts, and integrate more cultural knowledge of Vietnamese history, as well as present-day issues and topics, to create relevance in our activities.

Self-Awareness, Cultural Competency, and Ongoing Reflection and Assessment

This segues nicely into what I lack as a Caucasian-Secular-Democratic-American living, working, and teaching students of a, Asian-Buddhist-Atheistic-Socialist-Vietnam. Cultural practices and behaviors can often be very bewildering to me, especially in the realm of my rights as a foreign citizen under Vietnamese law. The interpersonal politics one can experience as a foreigner in another country can be enough to draw a negative view of that culture and people into your existence--and that is a place you really, really don't want to be. I see people lose themselves to it all the time, and admittedly, I've been there too once or twice.

Self-awareness becomes of importance in this regard when considering how little about the surrounding country, people, culture, and language I actually understand. Vietnam is famous for a very singular reason--and that reason is completely culturally-centric, to me. What Vietnam actually is is something far different than what's in our history books.

A good example of showing my ongoing learning about this place I'm living in is working with students who have a basic or below-proficiency skill in English. They still study from academic-centered textbooks, and they're often lost. So we do language exchange. Rather than tell them over and over what a "gerund" means, I instead try to find the way to explain, or at least write meta-language of grammatical terms. I've found this brings me closer to the students' level in two ways: 1) Even though they know their English skill isn't so great, they can see they are way ahead of my Vietnamese skills, and; 2) It shows them that I'm interested in helping them understand, and interested in their language, and by extension culture.

In regards to working exclusively with students of different cultures, I can consider myself as a person who values diversity, but I cannot deny that I always have something to learn when working with people and students of other races, creeds, and cultures. Inherently, and honestly, I find it extremely fascinating, but I'm also aware that my fascination might seem like tokenism or that I'm taking someone else's identity as novel. This is why it's very important to me to own my mistakes, turn over voices to the students themselves, and try to align lesson materials with the interests in my classroom.

These are only some examples of what I can do to create a positive classroom climate--in many ways, I feel as though I am helping myself shape a better climate this year. I think a big key for me has been handing over responsibility, voice, and action to the students themselves, and removing myself from the position of absolute authority. Though dominance and control do by some measure have to be asserted upon students, day-to-day reinforcement of their ideas and interests helps them find the benefit of their knowledge and relax into an environment that they can trust. This is the type of place in which I genuinely believe the best kind of learning takes place.