I love this newsletter's message. It helps me remember the things I learned this summer, as well as it encourages me to reflect on my own teacher language for this coming year. I need to practice... and as a coach, I need to be able to recognize it when I'm in classrooms.
I'm feeling stronger with my teacher language after the Responsive Classroom Level 1 training and I'm thinking I should re-read The Power of Words again. I only read it last fall... but, I have new schema and the re-read will really solidify how I need to retrain and practice the way I speak to children. Responsive classroom makes so much sense, it's so logical and practical... and the teacher language is so effective for the majority of our children. When it doesn't work, it is usually because we have not taught specific behaviors/ skills or practiced them or modeled them enough! Assume nothing ... if you expect it, you teach it and you model it interactively with the students! Interactive modeling works well because it requires us to think through exactly how we want things to look and sound like before we model for students. So often we just assume that students know what we mean, but we aren't really clear about our expectations: If we really teach expected behaviors, think about that... what powerful environments we are creating for our classrooms and schools!
It is discouraging when teachers appear not interested in giving Responsive Classroom an honest try... or that they judge the morning meeting on the silly stuff only. It's also disappointing when schedules do not allow enough time to really practice the morning meeting correctly. I'm hoping that I can see some honest efforts, positive attitudes and some professional growth in the area of Responsive Classroom in our classrooms across the county. I'm excited with my knowledge. I think these newsletters will be very helpful to keep me learning and thinking about teacher language.
