As an early childhood educator, my job is to create a learning environment in which my students can succeed to their highest potential. I believe that one of the most important ways to do this is to create relationships with your students and in turn, model how to form meaningful relationships among other students in the classroom. In other words, it is important to me that I create a safe, welcoming, trustworthy community in the classroom. Having this type of environment supports the success of each student. It is astonishing to see how chaos and disorder in the classroom, due to lack of respect for one another can have dramatic effect on learning. Teachers must model appropriate community behavior and instill it each and every day. This could be done by staying positive with the students, refraining from negative comments. In addition, greeting students at the door each and everyday and taking time to ask personal questions to let them know you are interested. Taking time in the morning each day to have a community share could be one way to help build a community. …show more content…
The lessons I create are inquiry based, which means students are actively learning. I am posing questions, giving scenerios, etc. instead of lecturing students and giving them facts. For example, I once taught a lesson on the parts of the plant using broccoli (flower), spinach (leaf), carrots(roots), seeds, and celery (stem). Instead of telling the students what “vegtable” was the part of the plant, I had the students investigate and create a picture of a plant using the different “vegetables”. It was not until after that I went over the answers. These lessons stretch students thinking power and leaves room for spontaneous, real-world