“Teachers shape culture in both obvious and less noticeable ways.” (Boss 15). This sentence right here highlights what I believe to be an essential and extremely important aspect of the classroom. Establishing and maintaining a strong, conducive to learning, healthy culture in a classroom is impossible to overvalue. Growing up, the teachers who provided a positive culture and maintained it throughout the year always ended up as the most successful and impactful teachers I ever had. In my observations, I will be looking for obvious signs of classroom culture. I am interested in seeing how an educator establishes and maintains a culture from an ‘outward-in’ perspective. Hopefully, paying close attention to classroom culture will better prepare me for creating fun and effective learning methods for students.

Actual Observations

On Thursday, September 29th, My class visited the Rockbridge County High School to observe several English classes. I was there to pay close attention to the classroom environment and culture, seeing if it was indeed present and how it positively impacted the class. The class I attended was an 11th-grade English class with a long-term, semester-wide focus on a career they might be interested in pursuing in the future. The first thing I immediately noticed was the physical aesthetics of the classroom. There were bright colors and posters present around the room, a stark contrast to the traditional and austere environment present at VMI. While this made the class feel a bit more ‘elementary’ in nature it also brought an inviting atmosphere to the room. I believe the decor of the classroom served to benefit the culture of the class making it seem open and inviting to all as a place of learning. On the particular day that I visited the class, the students were learning about how to effectively use in-text citations. The way their instructor was leading the class was positive and gave me a strong idea of how to structure my own future lessons. She was allowing students to work on their own designated work while remaining available to provide help or answer questions. She also made an effort to roam around and check on her students while giving positive remarks to encourage students. This class demonstrated concepts of PBL very well and was designed very uniquely. Having young, prospective learners engage with a career they want to pursue early in their career is a great project to get a head start on life and is a great way to teach long-term engagement that is much more present in real life than it is in a classroom environment. Overall I was very happy and encouraged by my visit and am looking forward to putting the skills and practices I observed into my own approach to teaching.

Picture Credits: https://pixabay.com/users/tumisu-148124/