Chapter 4: Creating a Culture of Success

“Most students do not want to be singled out, praise and criticism feel almost the same” ~ Bosung (page 67)

This chapter was all about how to create a successful culture in the classroom. Teachers walk a fine line between helping and not helping students and being overly friendly with students of not friendly enough. This chapter discusses a lot of how to create good relationships with students. Teachers need to encourage their students to do good work, but as the quote I chose from Bosung, a teacher shouldn’t always single out a student whether it is good or bad, students just want support for their efforts. Another aspect to this chapter was to teach students how to take risks in the classroom. This means that teachers need to get students to not be afraid to speak up in class, whether its that they have a question, comment or concern with what is going on in the classroom/lesson. The students surveyed in this book also feel that teachers will pick favorite students and not favorite students and treat them differently. The students teacher like will often get more support and higher expectations from the teacher. The other students get less attention and less support to do quality work.

I chose this quote from this chapter because I think it is important for any future teacher to know. When I was a student I did not have a problem being singled out for the good or the bad, so I never thought it was a problem (for good praise at least). I think it does make sense though, since as this book noted previously teenagers like to blend in and go with the flow of everything. That cannot happen if a student is being singled out in a class. I also think something should be done in efforts to make doing well in school appealing to more students. If students are turned off from learning from a “popularity” standpoint then they will have no luck succeeding in the classroom. In short I think doing well in school should be more of an accomplishment for students rather than being negative to them in their “social circles”.