Carol's Reflection on Graves, Chapter 4

By appearances Mr. Bangs' classroom looked like it was in order, so it took some self-reflection for him to realize that he needed to change its structure. I remember seeing firsthand the difference between an adult controlling kids with fear and children learning to control themselves by taking responsibility when observing my young nephews with their very strict stepfather years ago. They were always in line whenever he was around and people would say to their stepfather, "What well-behaved children!" But "well-behaved" is just an observable action at a point in time and says nothing about the character of a child. Bangs cared about his students' character and wanted to give them responsibility, ownership of their work, and a feeling of accomplishment by organizing his classroom in a way that nurtured these qualities. I'm pretty confident that I won't make the same mistake as Bangs; I don't think I can scare anyone into behaving! But constant self-refection will be important in my own teaching so that I can eliminate my students' dependence on me and help them to feel responsible and successful on their own.

The importance of each child independently having a place and purpose in the room and then feeling accomplishment as a group was illustrated for me when Jaimie and I were assigned a group of kids to be on our props and costume committee for our 5th grade play. One student in particular normally just seems to go through the motions in class. But after being assigned a responsibility within the group, she came alive and wanted to help all she could. In fact, all of the students jumped in during crunch time and helped get everything ready even if they weren't assigned that particular job because they wanted to help out the group. The play was successful because of individual efforts within that committee. It certainly turned into a "look what we can do" moment! The experience of putting on the play helped me to resolve to provide many opportunities for such moments in my own classroom