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The Responsive Classroom:
A Practical Approach for Bringing Democratic Ideals into the Daily Fabric of Classroom Life
Most teachers in this country would agree that teaching children to be active participants in a democratic society is an important goal of education. Yet how to accomplish this, given all the demands currently placed on teachers, is challenging, to say the least.
One thing we do know is that espousing democratic principles in a classroom is not enough. If children are to truly learn what it means to be active members of a democratic society, then these principles must become part of the working fabric of everyday classroom life.
Whether learning math or creating rules or planning a field trip, students must feel that they are known and that their voices are heard and count. They must feel respected and be able to respect others. They must feel valued as individuals but understand the importance of their contributions to the group.
In my years of working as a classroom teacher and a teacher educator, I have found The Responsive Classroom approach to teaching particularly helpful in establishing just such a classroom. It offers teachers tools and techniques for creating a learning community that reflects all that we value in a democracy.
Responsive Classroom practice was developed by the Northeast Foundation for Children. (See http://www.responsiveclassroom.org) There are seven guiding principals underlying the approach and six practical teaching strategies.
The seven principles are:
- The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
- How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand in hand.
- The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
- There is a set of social skills children need in order to be successful academically and socially: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
- Knowing the children we teach—individually, culturally, and developmentally—is as important as knowing the content we teach.
- Knowing the families of the children we teach and inviting their participation is essential to children's education.
- How the adults at school work together is as important as individual competence: lasting change begins with the adult community.
The six teaching strategies are:
- Morning Meeting: A daily routine that builds community, creates a positive climate for learning, and reinforces academic and social skills.
- Rules and Logical Consequences: A clear and consistent approach to discipline that fosters responsibility and self-control.
- Guided Discovery: A format for introducing materials that encourages inquiry, heightens interest, and teaches care of the school environment.
- Academic Choice: An approach to giving children choices in their learning that helps them become invested, self-motivated learners.
- Classroom Organization: Strategies for arranging materials, furniture, and displays to encourage independence, promote caring, and maximize learning and positive social interaction.
- Family Communication Strategies: Ideas for involving families as true partners in their children's education.
There are many good resources available from the Northeast Foundation for Children. One of the books I've found most useful is Ruth Charney's Teaching Children to Care. Long an underground classic and recently revisited (June, 2002), Charney gives the detail we should expect to see in a classroom with a working democratic fabric. For example, we teach children to build this fabric when we expect them to:
- Learn each other's names and get to know each other's interests and feelings
- Take turns without arguing, pouting or quitting
- Share supplies, snacks, attention from classmates, private time with the teacher and so on
- Make room in the circle even for children who aren't "best friends"
- Join small groups in a constructive way and invite others to join
- Greet and include others (not only friends) in conversation and activities
- Work on projects, solve problems, and play games with input from everyone
- Solve conflicts by talking and reaching mutually acceptable decisions without name-calling or hurtful behavior.
In her book, Charney tells us that children do not come to school knowing how to do all these things. They must be consciously taught, step-by-step. For example, Charney emphasizes reinforcing expected behaviors by commenting on what children do right, reminding children of expected behaviors before things go wrong, and redirecting children when they have gone off track – "The Three R's" for teaching self-control.
Charney meticulously describes a process for nourishing social participation and caring behavior, liberally lacing her text with anecdotes from her own and other teachers' classrooms. The practical wisdom from these stories helps persuade the reader that it is possible to create a classroom that is enlivened by caring and respect, and that such a classroom atmosphere is a critical foundation for learning. When we teach students to be self-disciplined and caring, we are using instructional time well. Most importantly, we are building essential democratic habits through the very routine of our classrooms.
About the Author: Dr. Belinda Gimbert is an educational consultant with the Northeast Foundation for Children and a professional development associate at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. Her research pursuits and teaching interests address classroom learning environments, teacher development, and educational technology. She can be reached at bgg111@psu.edu
© September 2002 New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.orgFor permission to redistribute, please go to:
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