Week 1 Post - Visualize

Journal Entry from a future student:

Dear Journal,

This morning I woke up without my Mom having to 'pull out the jaws of life'(as she says) to get me out of bed. I rushed downstairs to eat some cracklin oat bran cereal. My brother says it looks like bird food, but it's my teacher's favorite, so I really like it.
Today at school, it's my turn to do my silent reading in the reading tub. Miss Schlauder has a red bathtub in her room that's filled with all kinds of pillows. When someone gets a certain amount of points for reading, they get to sit in the read tub during class reading time AND teacher read. It's going to be such a good day.
My birthday will be the next best day because whenever it's a student's birthday, Miss Schlauder does something really funny. During Social Studies, she dresses up like someone from the history we are studying and she sings 'Happy Birthday' in their language or style or sometimes she even does a dance with the song. Last year, I heard she dressed up like a mummy because they were studying Egyptians and she sang a spooky happy birthday song.
Oh oh oh, and guess what else our class does! Once we all get 10 'caught being goods' for helping each other or being nice to someone else, we get a class goldfish. My older brother says they got three goldfish last year and one had a red spot on its belly so they called it a Japanese name because the Japan flag has a red dot in the middle.
I like my desk. Because I don't have junk falling out all over the place. I get my own cubby where I can put the extra things I don't need all the time like my art supplies and reading books. It has my name on it. I really like my name.
In the 2nd grade, I tripped over someones backpack and my hands stung all day. I was really embarrassed, but in this class, we keep our backpacks on hangy racks around the room so it's not so messy on the floor and dangerous.
I like the color blue. I think Miss Schlauder likes it too. Maybe I'll ask her today what her favorite color is. She says she's like an open book because when you ask her a question, she tells you everything, but I don't think she really looks like a book at all.
I used to hate spelling tests because my pencil always broke because when I get nervous I write really hard. But now I kind of like spelling. There are two boxes on the counter by the cubbies that say "sharpened" and "not sharpened". When ever we get a broken pencil, we put it in the not sharpened box and take a sharpened one. It's really handy.
I'm starting to like English too. Miss Schlauder brought in a picture today of when she was a little girl. She used to carry around a pink blanket that her Mom made for her. Well, today she also brought the actual pink blanket that was in the picture. We brainstormed together about questions we had about the blanket and we wrote it all down on the board. Then, we got to think of our own favorite childhood 'artifacts.' And we wrote some questions other people had about them. The writing part was easy because all we had to do was answer all the questions other people didn't know about our favorite thing from when we were little. I brought my stuffed animal gator. It has a tee shirt on it that says 'Someone in Florida loves me.' Hmm. I don't know who that person is.
Well, I better put away my writing journal. It's 10:30 and the 'transition song' just came on, so that means in 5 minutes, it is time for Math.
Bye!
F.S

I decided to try to get the feel for what I would like my future classroom to be like through the eyes of my future student. I did this for multiple reasons. First, I would really like my students to enjoy and appreciate my class and respect me as their teacher. In every personality/job test I have ever taken, they all say that I need praise and continual support, and if I receive both, than I will flourish. If I don't, than my talents won't be useful. It is important that I am passionate and enthusiastic about teaching. If my students can feel how much I love to learn, that I like them, and that I want them to learn, then I think my talents will be very useful to the classroom.
The second reason I used the journal entry approach to explaining my vision of my future classroom was to put come up with a few ideas and try to think how a student might respond to them. I will probably use a survey at the beginning of each school year to evaluate the kind of rewards, games, and types of things the class is most interested in. I did this as a teacher assistant and found that in the 'other ideas' column, there was listed goldfish, class parties, and a few other unique ideas, so I will try to continually come up with new motivational and fun ideas for the students.
Other things I tried to focus on in this journal entry were elements of safety in the class and an element of comfort. The students can feel more safe when the room is organized and there is walking space(clear paths). Also, by having a specific place to put their belongings, they will have less anxiety about losing things as kids often do. The element of comfort was the bathtub full of pillows for reading. This also included the idea of only having logical consequences. If you do your reading well, you get to do your reading in a comfortable place. That matches. Some teachers offer extra recess for completing their math assignments on time, but this consequence is neither logical or natural and will not be an intrinsic reward. Physically, by having an element of softness in the classroom, it emotionally adds positive warmth that the desks can't offer.
I want to get my students excited to learn and excited to come to school. I want their parents to be happy with their children's happiness. I want my collegues to feel welcome in my classroom and to feel able to take ideas from my class and share their class successes with me so that we can all incorporate a much more positive environment that will have less behavioral problems.
I don't mind what grade I teach, but I love english, writing, and art, so an older class could get into writing a little more deep. I will embrace honesty and optimism and set class goals that maintain a higher class moral.
I want the students to feel safe, respected, happy, liked, and smart. These are the class goals I will strive to facilitate as their teacher.