In a TeachingWorks blog post today, Deborah Loewenberg Ball reflects on the excitement and nervousness that come at the beginning of each new school year. She considers the unusual challenge and opportunity that teachers face each fall: an entirely new classroom of students with whom they must build relationships and learning environments. This is why, she contends, the first few weeks of school are so consequential:
What we do with our classes during this time shapes the months that follow. If we work with intentionality, we can use this beginning to construct a classroom in which our students will flourish as thinkers and knowers. This goal involves doing three things:
Creating a space in which doing the subject is a collective undertaking, not an individual and competitive one.
Signaling to students what doing the subject is going to involve in this class, and what is going to be valued in doing that sort of work.
Learning what students know and can do and demonstrating to them that we take them seriously as thinkers.
Read the full post on the TeachingWorks website.