Space is more than physical

Young learners need space. They need more than physical space and ideal buildings and facilities. They and their teachers need ‘head space’ and ‘time space’.  They need the chance to set the year, whatever the delights or the challenges of the physical space they occupy. There needs to be programmed 'readiness for learning’ in each and every year, and this requirement transcends the environment in which children are placed.

Class rules and discipline are a precursor to learning. One of the issues increasingly confronting teachers is a belief that they must teach, teach, and teach as soon as they take responsibility for a class of children. This may be at the beginning of a year, a semester, the beginning of a term or whenever a teacher takes responsibility for a new class.

It seems that teachers feel the need to jump in from the first bell, beginning to teach in a ‘go, go, go’ manner. Some go for it like there is no tomorrow. Some may approach the task more slowly. However, the majority, it seems, are for making an impact from the first minutes of the first day the class is theirs. That is a real worry.  By going over the top with teaching a class, teachers can lose the group.  It is ever so important that the initial time that teachers spend with a new class is a ‘steady as she goes’ period.

Set the scene with the children

Regardless of the physical environment, teachers need to set the scene with children.  A real loser for any teacher (and it often happens) can be an attempt to set the classroom scene without involving the children. Iron clad rules and tight procedures will quickly lose their impact if they are set without the involvement of the class. It is essential that class rules and procedures are recognised and established by the teacher and the children working together. Classes need to ‘own’ their governance. Rules won’t work if they are martially set, dictatorially pronounced and jackbootedly maintained. Collectivity, that is, the group contributing to (and therefore owning) governance is the smart way to establish procedures.
‘Us shaping’ rather than ‘me saying and you doing’ is a superior establishment methodology. ‘Groupship’ is empowering.

Without having the right approach to classroom management, a teacher can become an awfully isolated and disrespected adult individual floundering with a classroom of children. No teacher wants to lose his or her class in a personality maze.

First and second level ownership

The way classroom procedures are developed confers first or second level ownership. Children who feel a part of the ownership strategy are more likely to be compliant and act in accord with agreed procedures than would otherwise be the case.

Rules break down when there is little commitment and scant adherence on the part of children.  I believe this to be true of all children, including those of tender years.

Classrooms (regardless of their modernity or age, the age or fashion of the furniture and fittings and the square metres allocated per child) operate best when some simple precepts are in place. I would maintain the following as going part of the way toward the success of teaching and learning:

• developing rules ‘with’ rather than ‘for’ children
• wording rules encouragingly rather than punitively
• engaging children so that rules and procedures are regarded in a primary rather than a secondary sense.

All of this points to the need for teachers to spend time in a ‘getting to know and understand you’ phase with children. This helps to build strong relationships foundations. This will lead to the development of a class environment through the shared shaping of agreed procedures.  Several simple precepts present as being important to this establishment. They are simple, based on common sense and so easily overlooked!

Children need to be organised

• Children are best disposed toward being organised if they participate in creating organising structures, including classroom rules and procedures.
• Routines established should be based on fair and predictable application.  There is a need for even-handedness and impartiality in all situations.
• Teachers can’t teach control but should teach in a way that gains control. This happens best in classrooms where principles being espoused are applied.

Rules, organisation, routines and procedures are important

They need to be established by teachers working in a way that sees the first days and weeks being spent on getting to know children.  When this happens and when ground rules are in place, teachers will be able to teach with the confidence that underpins successful teaching and learning strategies. Teachers who go full on from day one, and ignore the need to develop management strategies with children, may well set themselves up for a long period of tiring and frustrating teaching. This careful nurture and development is an essential part of training and development upon which educational effort should be based.

Children need training

Without diminishing or in any way tarnishing the intelligence of homo sapiens, I sometimes think about the development of children in the same way I’d consider dog obedience classes. I think of a delightful dog with a happy and carefree nature. It is a lolloping and happy, yet totally uncontrolled, undisciplined and range-free canine. In dog-like terms, it is probably adolescent and possibly past the age of recovery. The road to rectification of manners, deportment and attitude will be long and tortuous with only minimal change being possible. The dog is set in its ways.

Similarly, children go through a period of formation.  In their formative years, they are impressionable and respond to training and development. They are receptive. Just as young dogs need to be taught dog obedience while they are puppies, children need to be developed while young - very young. It is never too early to start with these necessary developments. But it is easy to leave the commencement of this shaping until it is altogether too late.  This, to me, is the overlooking of ‘time space’. We neglect critical and important developmental priorities at our peril, and to the detriment of children.

One of the things that really rankles is when I hear people say - as they do - that the nurture of young children can be left at the moment because they are too young. In other words, there is plenty of time to develop them as they grow older.  However, this is a sad and ignorant perception.  The Catholic Church used to say that the age of impression was up to, and including, the age of seven years. They posited that if children were practiced in the art of Catholic devotion prior to the age of seven, they remained with the church in a steadfast and generally unwavering way for the rest of their life. They might drift off from time to time, but inevitably came back to their belief platform.

In educational terms, we would do well to think the same way. Frazer Mustard makes the point that brain malleability - especially its capacity for development and absorption - declines precipitously from birth to three years of age, continuing a sharp decline until the age of 10. Brain malleability then plateaus and continues a gentle descent that parallels the increasing chronology of the individual. He makes the point that young and impressionable individuals have less resources put into their development than those who are older. I think this follows in educational terms, particularly in a context of where resources are generally prioritised to meet the needs of older children and students at secondary and tertiary level.  (It is only in recent times that the Australian Government has opened up on recognition of early childhood education).

Responsibility to enrich young learning years

Educationally speaking, and until very, very recently, resources have tended to be prioritised toward tertiary, senior secondary, secondary and junior secondary students, in that order. Then come the upper, middle and finally lower primary and preschool children. This prioritisation has seemingly rested on the belief that the older children and students are, the more has to be or is tipped into their education because of the accountability and measurement factor. Accountability is about the measurement of academic results. It seems that the only things taken into account in measuring educational development is how well children are doing in literacy and maths.

I worry about the short-sightedness of a process that upholds measurement of only one developmental domain. The holistic (I sometimes use the term ‘wholelistic’ for impact) notion of development is a much more rational and necessary alternative.  It takes account of the social, emotional and moral/spiritual development of children.  There is a sad juxtaposition in all this.

On the one hand, we read and hear of the desire of educators to develop children in a complete, rounded and fulfilled manner. On the other, we have acquiesced to ‘narrow gauge’ rather than ‘broad banded’ measurement.  We focus on academics, forgetting or minimising our appreciation of the other elements that should be part of the developmental framework.

Routines and procedures are the linchpins on which sound classroom development is predicated. While much of the routinisation does not directly impact on academics, processes and procedures help in the development of children as whole or complete people. The process of developing (maturing) personality has benefits in terms of enhanced attitudes to work and learning.

The environmental and atmospheric set of circumstances pervading and surrounding educational delivery is critical to focusing children on work and learning.  That is about a lot more that buildings, space ‘prettiness’, furniture and fittings. Outcomes are enhanced if procedures are in place to help make things work better.

Training needs to precede learning. Agreed, classroom rules can translate into positive attitudes, quality routines and wholesome classroom operational manner - this on a day-to-day not an ‘occasional’ or ‘sometimes’ basis.  Procedures that are in place become operational precepts that are practised and reinforced as habits - good habits.  The care children take in property classroom care, property management and respect for the resource they use builds harmony and promotes atmosphere.
Part of good routines and procedures are the working habits developed with, and for, children. These habits go beyond classroom rules and procedures because they are an essence of individual training.  These habits and working attributes include the following:

• desk habits, including pencil hold, paper position and writing posture
  
• use of loose sheets of paper, including storage in books and files
  
• gluing paper in the right places and fixing into work books
  
• using cloth for wiping up spills. The teacher may rinse the cloth every so often, with children trained to use it automatically to wipe up spills.
  
• correct school bag and lunch box storage, with bags and boxes stowed by habit at the start of the school day or at the end of eating periods (included is fridge opening and closing procedures, recess and lunch eating habits, rubbish and wrapper disposal)
  
• movement habits in and around the classroom including places for walking, running  and playing.  Hats on and off, depending on the area of play is included. Lining up and readying procedures at the end of lunchtime is included in the ‘movement and motion’ strategy.

Facilities, including the quality of the physical space and the visual environment, are important.  However, I maintain that the establishment of routines and procedures must be the number one priority in any classroom, focused upon and given the highest rating in importance terms from day one of the school year or learning period.  Once these processes are in place, learning can occur.  That learning will be in the context of appreciating the physical environment and the learning space.

While it takes time to set strategies in place, it is time well spent. Good classroom habits and practices that sit aside, and in a complimentary way, to class rules and procedures, ensure, through their practice, that things go smoothly. The time initially spent in this ordering returns ten-fold in benefit terms because interruptions and disruptions are avoided.  Boundaries are established.

Teaching is spoiled and learning diminished if management devices are not in place and practised. Teachers can be too busy in valiantly attempting to control, manage and discipline to teach. They wear themselves to frazzles and finish up with a bunch of students who range from the very disruptive (those setting the classroom social agenda) to the very frustrated (those who want to learn but are not taught because the teacher is too preoccupied to teach).

Process and procedures, rules and regulations are reinforcing, empowering and satisfying. That satisfaction embraces students, teachers, the class as a community, and the school as a whole.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Henry Gray is principal of Leanyer School, in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. He has been involved with school leadership since 1971.

 

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