A child-friendly classroom is more than just mounting stuff on the walls

Oct 05, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I still cannot understand how we can celebrate two things in one month. I had recommended that Education Month be moved to October and Agriculture Month be in November, since schools will be too busy with sports and such during September to focus on celebrating Education month. Amerindian Heritage is also celebrated in September. I hope there is a change soon.
The Ministry of Education seeks to link child-friendly classrooms with effective curriculum delivery, hence the presence of quality education in this year’s Education Month theme. What is a child-friendly classroom? Speaking from the standpoint of a teacher, it is one which fosters learning to the maximum; promotes healthy learning activities; creates a fitting climate for effective learning to take place; and debars any hindrance to the learning process, be it anything from the outside that could affect the learning outcomes of students in the classrooms.
The classroom is a teacher’s sacred space. It is where he will practice his skills whether they were learnt at the teacher’s training college or University of Guyana, to effect change in behaviour and deliver effectively the teaching curriculum of the Ministry of Education.
The classroom is the most important place in the school environment. The classroom is important to both teacher and student alike. Classrooms ought to be the children’s second home away from home, within the school environment. The school environment intends to be the village away from home. The classroom is where most of the learning takes place, and both teachers and parents are mandated to create wholesome and healthy learning environments for their students and children.
Notice the theme mentioned parents too. Students must first be accustomed to a healthy family environment in the home. A child-friendly home is a rarity to find these days. Too often we have homes where parents curse and abuse each other, husbands beat wives, alcohol being used and abused, and an overabundance of societal-ills which have spilled over into the homes.
This excess will spill over into the school environment because the child will take whatever is being done in the home and exhibit some, if not most, of it in the classroom. And that is a recipe for disaster. That would hinder the other students from learning and encumber the delivery of the curriculum.
Teachers are usually told to mount teaching aides, charts and other written elements on the walls of their classrooms. But a child-friendly classroom is more than just mounting stuff on the walls — much of which gets torn down at the blink of an eye. Child-friendly classrooms must promote peace and love too. Child-friendly classrooms are important elements in the learning process and it is the teacher who must spearhead the efforts of child-centred learning and child-friendly classrooms.
An atmosphere of peace, tranquility (quite difficult to achieve these days as schools are some of the most noisy places to be), and bonding among students are some of the hallmarks of a child-friendly space in the school.
Much research has been put into this arena of making children friendly spaces in schools and educators have fought long and hard to bring to the floor some of the information that is much needed to conquer the poor conditions of classrooms worldwide.
It’s as simple as this: a child can feel depressed and want to drop out of school or never go back to school if he or she positions him or herself in a poorly structured classroom environment. Such is the fragility and importance of these spaces of learning.
In studies which were published, the Lewinian model (Lewin 1943) states that, “the classroom environment may interact with students’ personal characteristics and affect learning attitude and behaviour”.  These researchers have all focused on the physical environment as well as the social environment.
The school environment extends to the classroom for which can be categorized several sub-branches of environments namely: The physical environment of the classroom: the lighting, seating arrangement, ventilation, pollution, chairs and desks; and  the psychological environment, namely the social quality of the classroom as it relates to students’ perceptions about feelings and relationships.
Surprisingly, researchers have delved into the leadership styles of teachers in the classrooms and this has hinged on the classroom climate and environment as well. French and Raven (1968) rightfully states that a teacher can use various types of power in the classroom to influence his students, namely reward power, coercive power, position power, personal power and expert power.
The teacher, manipulating his use of these powers interchangeably, can achieve much control over his class and create a stable situation especially during these days when a teacher has sometimes over 35 students to deal with at once in his classrooms. Smaller classes are something the teachers’ union here ought to fight for.
The effects of an unhealthy classroom atmosphere can be disastrous and create a chaotic school climate.
Fights, bullying and even injuring students and teachers can all result from a poor classroom atmosphere. A teacher’s presence in a classroom, if not all, then at most times, can contribute much to the whole idea of child-friendly classrooms.
Though the challenges such as poor working conditions, pay packages and enormous class sizes, together, teachers can and must weather the storm. I believe if anyone becomes a teacher, then he or she must have emerged from a healthy classroom environment. Children — every single one of them — must feel comfortable and safe in the classrooms of the 21st century.
Leon Jameson Suseran

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