Preparing for the New School Year!

How do our students know that they are in a caring learning environment? With structure, comes freedom. By establishing norms for interaction, for the sharing of ideas, critique and evaluation, we determine the social behaviors that are accepted and those that are not. In Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning: What does the research say? 

“Christenson and Peterson (1998) identified six factors that reflect the complementary nature of family-school-community roles for children’s school success: standards and expectations, structure, opportunity to learn, support, climate/relationships, and modeling.”

Here is some food for thought:

* How do you state expectations for student performance, set specific goals and standards for behavior?
* How do you establish norms and routines in your art classroom?
* How do you provide a variety of learning options and communicate the availability of such opportunities for learning?
* How do you model the desired behaviors and the value of learning and of working hard in your daily life? How do you share your goals as a learner?

And perhaps most importantly, for the development of the relationship between learners, students and teacher/facilitator:

* How do you get to know each student? How do you check-in regularly with each one?
* How do you establish warmth and friendliness, approachability and encouragement in your classroom?