“Nurturing Students” in Classrooms – A heartfelt sharing from a teacher

Ms. Tsang Yuet Ming

 

           Our school has been actively promoting Character Building to guide students to be their best selves. A positive school year theme, rich subject knowledge, and teachers' daily practices are valuable learning experiences. This year, I am honoured to be able to explore different learning activities with my students to build a positive learning environment.

 

           With the aim of building a loving and caring class, I set up a give-and-take corner in the classroom to encourage students to give praise and take action to spread kindness in the classroom. Teachers wrote different encouragement notes on the memos for students to take, such as "You can do it", "I believe in you", "Let's work on this together". If students took one, they had to draw a card from the "Give" session to take a giving-back action, such as “Help others to hold the door”. Various tasks were included to let students help one another in different ways. Students were eager to write more kind words for others to take and were willing to offer their helping hands.

 

           With the ambition to change the competitive environment, I tried to build up students’ cooperation skills. In pair works, students were taught to give feedback in a constructive, friendly and supportive way to each other. To stop the never-ending number chase among students, I challenged them to focus on improving from their own mistakes. I discussed students’ mistakes like a trial-and-error experience and a lesson to learn from. We would laugh and joke about them. Then we would discuss how to avoid making the same mistakes. Even junior form students took control of their studies and became more aware of their learning.

 

           Many brilliant minds and talents are gathered in our school. Yet, there are students with different learning paces and competence in each class. To address learner diversity, I speak to my students with their favourite movie quote, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I told the more capable students I was glad they were doing great independently. Nonetheless, I encouraged them to make the right choice by using their talent and gifts to help others instead of making others feel horrible.

 

           These are some of my attempts to promote positive education, and I am sure you may have even more brilliant ideas to share. Talk to your peers to exchange your thoughts and experiences. Let’s work hand in hand to create the best learning environment for the next generation.