Annie Hunt

EDL 318 A
March 6, 2016
Prompt 6
Unity and community in schools and classrooms is absolutely
crucial to creating a positive learning environment for our students.
People have researched this topic time and time again, determining
every time the benefits and positive outcomes of having the school be
a community for each student. Ayers says that Teaching requires
thoughtful, caring people to carry it forward successfully, and we need,
then, to commit to becoming more caring and more thoughtful as we
grow into our work. By being the caring and thoughtful teachers that
we should desire to be, we should, in theory, create a classroom
community that makes our students learning experiences thrive and
come alive.
Meier discusses the idea that schools need to be a successful
democracy in order to impact the children in the best of ways. She
brings up five ideas that need to be present when there is the desire to
create successful democratic schools. They are that schools need
focus, one size does not fit all, the students should have lots of human
interaction, the forms of governance would differ, and the reform
consistent with democracy does take time. I really enjoyed and agreed
with her third point, that a school that trains people for citizenship in a
democracy needs a faculty made up of individuals who can model what

it means to value one anothers ideas, to be open to new views, and to

be comfortable with defending their ideas in public (Meier, 2003) If
we are expecting our students to be successful democratic citizens in
our communities, we need them to see that demonstrated on a daily
basis. I have not seen much of this in the schools that I have been in
thus far. In most of the schools that I have seen, the teachers look
down on the students and also do not show their availability to new
ideas. So often, teachers are told to be a certain way when they teach
because of standards, and so they do not value new or original ideas.
They also tend to just be teaching to the test, so they dont value
students opinions and individual personalities in the classroom.
Although community and democracy are so crucial in classrooms, I
have yet to see a successful display of that group of people.
Aside from creating a democratic community for students,
developing a community in the classroom is done through relationships
and knowing my students. As mentioned before, teachers tend to only
see the external side of students, but knowing their hearts and internal
struggles create a whole new dynamic. Ayers brings up that we need to
assume the students capacity even it may not be visible which is a
very important point. I have heard it said before that, Children dont
care about how much you know, until they know how much you care.
These two statements work alongside one another, because they show
the desperation for children to know that we care about more than

their test scores. By actually knowing and believing in our students, it

creates a strong bond and community that will bring alive the
childrens learning experiences. I, once again, have not seen this
played out in classrooms that I have worked in. A lot of what I see in
classrooms impedes the classroom community building aspect of great
schools. Teachers discourage talking amongst peers, allowing
collaboration, or discussing anything going on besides what is
supposed to be taught. When these discussions are discouraged and
even worthy of punishment it completely strips the students from
having the opportunity to create a community.