We were at the very beginning of the discussion. I had gone over the norms. One of our central norms is “one mic” or that one student speaks at a time while everyone else listens. I called on the first student. As they started to speak, a couple students immediately started having a side conversation. I thought to myself, Ugh! How could this be happening? We weren’t even five minutes into the discussion and already I had two students off task. I felt I needed to address the side conversation and reassert our one mic norm to make sure everything didn't go out the window right at the beginning. I knew that it was important for me, a new, young, female teacher, to be an authority figure in the classroom. But, philosophically I believed that relationship-building and student comfort are necessary for students to learn. By reasserting the one mic norm, I would be putting the developing relationships with my students at risk, and yet doing so was necessary for building an effective space for discussion. How could I set the tone of the discussion as serious but also relaxed enough that students would feel comfortable contributing and could think/process out loud to work through the difficult questions we were tackling?
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Elena
11th Grade
American Studies
Preservice Teaching Year
- What is the teacher's dilemma? Consider the teacher's goals, possible actions, beliefs about the situation and the students, and their own self-perceptions.
- Complete or modify the following sentence in a way that captures the teacher's central tension in the situation: "While on the one hand, the teacher believed/wanted/felt/did __________, on the other hand, they believed/wanted/felt/did __________."
Thinking about your own classroom, how do you balance the need to uphold norms with the goal of creating a relationship with students that supports their participation?
Watch as this dilemma unfolds for Elena in her classroom.