The Third Teacher

Today I saw a video called “The Third Teacher”.  

The third teacher is about how the learning environment (e.g., the classroom) acts as a third teacher for students.  The other two teachers are the actual teacher and the students’ peers.   The video stresses the importance of having the flexibility of space in the classroom.  It is unrealistic to expect students to sit in uniform desks for extended periods of time in rows and maintain full attention.  

The video talks about the importance of designing spaces where students can explore and interact in more natural ways.  One concrete example is allowing students to move around and move their desks to form groups for learning.  Placing desks in a semi-circle to allow for full group interaction is another example.  It is important to set up our classroom in such a way that students can feel comfortable.  Taking students outside to learn is also important, some schools have an outdoor classroom with benches for students where students can connect with the outdoors.  Where going outside is not an option, hallways can be used as learning spaces for students who need to move around or require a quieter space (with adequate supervision).

Interestingly, Google’s headquarters, Googleplex, is an amazing example of an environment that fosters creativity and productivity for its’ employees.  Google provides its’ employees with a variety of perks.  Employees can sit in bean bag chairs for comfort and are allowed frequent breaks and free access to eateries within the Googleplex.  While some of these things are not feasible in a regular classroom, this definitely gives me food for thought as I set up my classroom for September and do my programming.

The Golden Rule

In September, as I am co-creating the classroom environment with my students and establishing our classroom principals I always share with them "the golden rule" I learned as a child: treat others the way you want to be treated.  We discuss what that means as a class, and more importantly, what does that look like in our learning environment.  Students share their thoughts and ideas and together we create a concept chart that includes student generated examples of the golden rule.  At it's core the golden rule stresses the importance of being kind and caring and the students recognize that.  We discuss the importance of being kind and caring people and how that impacts not only us in our classroom but how it impacts the world we live in.

A wonderful picture book that illustrates the concept beautifully is A Circle of Friends by Giora Carmi.  The book is wordless but it's illustrations convey the story clearly and can be appreciated by all elementary students.  In the story a little boy's act of kindness inspires a cycle of kind acts that inevitable comes back to the boy.

I also make a point of sharing this video called the kindness boomerang.  This video was introduced to me by a colleague who uses this video to inspire her students to perform random acts of kindness.  A follow-up activity you can have your students do is challenge them to perform a random act of kindness for somebody and have them share (in whatever medium they prefer) how that random act impacted them and the person they were kind to.  The video link is below, enjoy!: