Exit slip

Praise is a verbal mechanism used to acknowedge good behaviour such as improvement or sucess and is often used by teachers in order to express their content with a student's behaviour. In most circumstances teachers are aiming to become a reflective teacher and the praise given is usually with their student's best interest in mind. Althought there are many benefits with being honest about your content as a teacher with how any indivdual student is performing there needs to be careful consideration of the spectrum of responses that students have as a result of praise. 

Today I very confidently placed myself at a 10 as an extrovert. Talking is my favorite activty, I have virtually no anxiety about speaking to or infront of anyone, and I really really love people. More notably I love people because it gives my brain the opportunity to express the thoughts and experiences that I am having when otherwise I find great difficutly finding a means to do this. Growing up, however, I was very socially introverted. I think one of the reasons I felt introverted had to do with the necessity of behaving that way in order to go about day to day life. My family situation was not very stable and there was glooming inevitably of discomfort for everyone and therefore an expectation of not talking or addressing this discomfort. In elementary school my best friend was very dominate, even to the point of borderline forcing myself and three other friends to dress up like the cheetah girls for a week straight, and therefore even though I have memories of acknowledging a need to talk in order to conceptualize my thoughts I usually kept to myself and listened. When I graduated elementary school and went into middle school I was transfered to a school closer to my father's house. In this new school I was in late french-immersion and had the same class of 19 students for three years. In this particular class group work was the worst possible iteration of a nightmare. I was ignored, made fun of, laughed at, and humiliated on a daily basis from this set of classmates. I learned perhaps wrongly but very quickly that it is much easier to hide yourself to avoid critism than the alternative, and thus I very rarely talked with anyone at all. 

The people I spoke to during that time were mostly teachers in some capacity. I have a large family, 4 sisters and 3 brothers, so all going through school most teachers immediately recognized my last name. A truly huge percent of my teachers reached out to me and members of my family and provided support. One particular occurance that really shaped my transition from introverted to extroverted was when my english teacher encouraged me to try out for the improv team. I immediately felt welcome and comfortable and had a new way to express myself in a way that was within my personality. Almost immediately after starting theatre my confidence and self-worth skyrocketed and I started feeling drive and excitement. I was feeling a lot better than I had felt really during any stage of my life thus far. I started to love school instead of dreading it and my grades rose substainally.

I think the biggest importance behind implementing a multi-dimensional classroom is the ability to be accomodating to the wide spectrum of students in each and every single class. As an educator one can use experience and knowledge as ways in which you can help students and meet their learning needs. Praise will make some students happy but in order to be a truly reflective teacher one must always consider what will make all students happy.