"Schools that Learn" Reflection

In reading “Schools That Learn”, I reflected on many different aspects of education, comparing what the book ideally talks about accomplishing day-by-day with what I can actually accomplish in my classroom on a daily basis. The part of the book that stuck out the most to me contained the headline, “A Shared Vision Process for the Classroom.” I immediately thought about this phrase that I had also come across in my readings, “The one person who could fix these problems and reflect on the system as a whole and how it is functioning has no voice—and that’s the student.” I thought to myself, how can I give my students a voice? When I give them choices between cooperative learning or individual work, they take advantage and fool around. When I ask for their opinions on what topics they want to review or spend more time on, they choose nothing and aren’t interested. How could we rely on student voices to fix the problems within the education system or even within my own classroom if they have no motivation in being in a math class?
After reading about “A Shared Vision Process for the Classroom”, I took a step back from the negativity I was initially feeling and opened up my mind to this “Shared Vision” which sounded so appealing and ideal to me. Tim Lucas talks about ways to approach students on the first day of school to set the tone in your classroom for the whole year. Rather than reading a whole long list of rules and guidelines, the most important things we should be doing on that first day is asking our students a series of questions such as, “What would you like this classroom to be like? How would you like to be treated here? What would make you look back and say, “This was a great class?” By asking students these questions on the first day of school, you give each student a chance to think about what he/she wants from you, your class, and school. It encourages them to set goals on day 1 and shifts the responsibility onto them to achieve them. As a class, you have developed a shared vision for the future days, weeks, and months. Together, you can work to make your classroom engaging through the open, comfortable relationship you have developed together. Lucas discusses how now, discipline is no longer just in the hands of the teacher. You can continually refer back to the ground rules cocreated by the class to fix problems that arise and find adequate solutions.
Again, things are not always as nice or perfect in a real classroom as we would like. Although a certain technique may sound good, in reality, it just doesn’t work as nice. This is where my negativity came from, and where the frustration comes from for a lot of teachers. This book has taught me that the key to success is realizing that everyday will not be perfect but at the same time, understanding that learning is driven by a vision, a shared vision that we should all have with each of our students for a healthy learning environment.