Mind over matter

Mind over matter

One of the most important qualities a teacher can have is the ability to create a safe-space in a classroom, where learners will have the freedom to voice their opinions and debate about topics related to the lesson. The teacher must be able to maintain this safe-space and organise the lesson to make effective use of it.

A Safe-space goes hand in hand with classroom management. In an article written by Dr. Linda Dusenbury, she stated that to have a manageable classroom you need to be able to keep the classroom neat, make it easy to supervise your students and also organise the physical space of your classroom.

To create the safe space completely links up to pastoral care and the well-being of your students. This space where the learner will have complete freedom to ask anything or discuss it will strengthen the curriculum and, as said in the video of effective pedagogy, allow your learners to flourish. Interacting with their fellow learners will also create learning outside the classroom.

Making use of the resources that are available to you will create an active and ever changing classroom, where the learning will not get bored by using the same method of learning the whole time. It will also improve communication skills with your classroom, since a lot of questions come with the introduction of something new. Use what is available to you, but use it effectively.

The most important lesson that came out of Abby Wills blog, for me, was that you don’t need to force and control learners to do a certain activity. Use and enrich their minds to apply what you want done in the classroom. Make them think about the topic, about they are doing and how they are doing it. Develop their problem solving skills by proposing a problem that is occurring regularly in class and ask them to work together to help you and them as well to make this class a fun and effective learning environment.

The purpose of this blog is not to tell you about how to manage your class, it is about how you can create a safe-space for your learners to thrive, use all resources effectively but most of all to enrich the minds of your learner by not controlling them, but to make them think about issues concerning the topic and think about it. To make them use their mind to solve certain problems, as said in the title, mind over matter.