Recently, my wife and I went to an ATM to get some money. When we arrived at the ATM station, there was a single long queue of people who wanted to do the same. There were two ATMs at the station but no one seems to be using one of them. My wife, like all the other people probably, assumed that the other machine could not dispense with cash.

We waited patiently in the queue.  Then a woman walked up to the line of people and she bean staring hard at the other machine. It seemed to be working because we could see that the screen was on. However we had all made the inference that it could not dispense with cash. The lady stared again at the machine and then she asked me if that machine was working. I said that it probably could only not dispense with cash and that is why everyone had formed one queue and had not used that particular machine.

The lady still continued to stare hard at the machine and eventually she went up to it and tried to get some cash from the machine. And it worked! She was able to get her cash. I couldn’t help but laughed at the situation. I could see that most of the others in the queue either looked a little bemused or a little flabbergasted.

Meanwhile, the lady left the ATM smiling happily, probably thinking how dumb the rest of us had been for standing in the queue and not using the other machine. Honestly, she deserved her little victory because she had the thought to managed her impulsivity to think like the rest in the queue had done, and she thought of another possibility. This is what Art da Costa and Bena Kallick describe in their Habits of Mind framework about the need to manage impulsivity. They also talked about taking responsible risks. I failed as I had assumed the worst. But I consoled myself that I had passed too somewhat because I could still find humor in the experience. Finding humor is also part of the Habits of Mind framework.

Imagine that you are seeing a doctor to attend to your illness. In his spanking new clinic with all the new equipment, you feel safe and reassured by all the framed degrees on the wall. You are in the safe hands of a professional. You enter the consultation room and meet your doctor. He greets you and asks you what was wrong with you. He takes out his stethoscope and and his thermometer and tests your temperature and listens to your heartbeat. He then tests your blood pressure and tells you what he has found out about you.

You wait for his diagnosis and what he thought the prescription for your malady would be. But to your surprise after diagnosing you he tells you that is all he has for you and does not prescribe any medicine. You ask and he still just tells you that if you are still ill in two days, you are to pay him another visit, A little perplexed you go off and return in two days as no prescription was given for your illness and it did not go away. The same routine repeated itself and again you are told to go home without any prescription. What would you be thinking of your doctor now?

Similar things happen in many schools and other educational institutions today. Teachers today are very geared towards assessment. In many schools, the form of the assessment is usually of the summative kind as in the case of high stakes examinations or semestral examinations. Often these assessment are done with little follow-up action to ensure that learning has taken place for the students. This is akin to the story of the doctor above who only does tests on you but gives you little or nothing in the way of prescription about your illness. Does your child have such doctors in his school?

I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom.  It is my personal approach that creates the climate.  It is my daily mood that makes the weather.  As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.  I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.  In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
- Haim Ginot, Professor of Psychology

If we were to recall a teacher who we felt had a positive influence on us during our student days, we are most likely to think of a teacher who had made us feel comfortable and through the teacher’s ability to make us feel comfortable, we are able to learn what we have been given to learn. Modern cognitive research also shows that the brain cells would shrink in the face of a hostile environment as for example when we feel fear or unsafe. On the other hand, the same brain cell would grow and develop if the environment is safe and comfortable. A teacher, therefore, ought to be aware that the classroom climate is the most important condition for learning to take place. The teacher must cultivate positive attitudes and perceptions about learning among the students.

The creation of safe, non-threatening and conducive environment to learning is a pre-requisite to good teaching. A teacher must make the effort to create such an environment. The teacher would have to ask several questions to achieve this goal. For example, the teacher must ask what makes the students feel accepted in the class. Acceptance here, refers to acceptance not only by all the teachers teaching that class but also the student’s peers.

The teacher must also ask what makes the student comfortable. Is there order in the class? Do students know where to look for things? Do they know the classroom procedures? Do they know what is expected of them when they come into the classroom and when tasks are given? A well-run classroom will give the student that feeling of stability and focus.

There are also many things that the teacher can do to make the classroom a less threatening and intimidating place. A classroom should be a safe place for learning. The student must be free from not only physical hurt but also, and perhaps, more importantly, hurt from the words of their peers and teachers. I believe all of us know that words can harm the confidence and motivational level of students more than perhaps physical threats. Unfortunately, threats and intimidation are quite often the norm in classrooms all over the world.

The teacher also must seriously attempt to make the learning as suitable as possible for the learner. Students like to see relevance. Teachers must make the extra effort to connect for the students what they are learning to their own lives. If the students’ perceptions of the learning is that it has little relevant to them, they are less likely to be interested or motivated to learn. Furthermore, as I have mentioned in a previous posting, making the connection for students is actually teaching for transfer.

The teacher must also ensure that the learning is not too difficult for the student. The teacher should stretch the student but the stretching must not be done at the expense of learning being done in progressive and logical steps. The teacher must make sure that bridges are made during lessons so that the student can understand easier the new content. Scaffolding becomes important in the teaching and learning. The student should feel that the learning is manageable and that it does not require a quantum leap in the mental processes.

Teachers who are mindful of their students’ perceptions and attitudes towards learning will find that their students will be more enthusiastic and motivated to do well in class. Teachers can make or break students. That is how pwerful a teacher can be. As insinuated by the quotation that I began this post with, that power demands greater responsibility on our part in how we treat our students.