How to Develop a Welcoming Culture

This was an interesting article. It talked about how students who cause problems in the classroom are ones who need better social skills. That these students don't know how to behave and they need to practice correct skills. Dr. Curwin was saying how if a child misses a shot in basketball we don't tell them that they can't try again until they get better. We tell that child to keep practicing until they get better and he says that we should use the same strategy with misbehavior. He says that we shouldn't take the child out of the social situation like we tend to do. We should let them practice the correct behavior. I agree with this but it is very difficult to do with the size of classrooms that we have now. There are so many children (typically) in just one classroom that misbehaves and needs to be taught how to act appropriately. Teachers just don't have to time to do it and it's basically physically impossible since there are so many students and only one teacher. I have been in a lot of classrooms where just learning how to act appropriately would be what the students would learn for at least a week or so and that would be excluding everything else. I do know from experience that if you make a student feel welcomed and secure that they will have better behavior but sometimes no matter what you do they won't change because they have been so badly wounded.

Curwin, R. (2012, July 1). How to develop a welcoming culture. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/welcoming-all-children-richard-curwin?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: EdutopiaNewContent (Edutopia)&utm_content=Google Reader