| Creating a Caring Classroom Community |
A caring classroom community:
Teaching students to respect and care about each other.
Key Ideas
- Just as children need
caring attachments to adults, they also need caring attachments to each
other. They are much more likely to accept the values and rules of the
group when they feel accepted and affirmed by the group.
- The peer culture is
a powerful moral teacher and influence on student behavior. If teachers
do not help to shape a positive peer culture -- one that supports the
ethical values adults are trying to teach -- the peer culture will often
develop in the opposite direction, creating peer norms (e.g., cruelty
to kids who are different, disrespect for rules and adult authority)
that are antithetical to good character.
- When students are
part of a legitimate caring moral community in the classroom, they learn
morality by living it. They receive respect and care and practice giving
it in return. Through daily experiences, respect and care gradually
become habits -- part of their character.
Strategies
Teachers can create a moral community
in the classroom by helping students to:
- Know each other as
persons
- Respect, care about,
and affirm each other -- and refrain from peer cruelty (both abuse and
exclusion)
- Feel valued membership
in, and responsibility to, the group (including practicing an ethic
of interdependence: "Who has a problem the rest of us might be able
to help solve?").
Example:
Laura LoParco, resource room teacher:
stopping a third-grade class's cruelty to Rhonda, a child with a learning
disability:
What you are doing is hurting
Rhonda
here [pointing to her own head], in her mind. You can't see the
hurt, but it's very real. You can make her think that she is stupid and
the kind of person that nobody will like. That may stay in her mind for
a very long time, even years. It may affect her ability to learn and her
ability to make friends with other people. You have a decision to make:
Do you wish to continue doing this?
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