My approach to teaching has always been very student-centred and constructivist in essence.

I always wanted
my classroom to be a very positive place for my students and believed that it was. Observations from leaders
in my school would always back up this belief, and I was always commended on my rapport with students. I
had agreed, since the start of my teaching career, with Brodenbrenner’s (2005) claim that students flourish
most in caring and supportive environments. Glasser (2005) also supported this idea and wrote of the seven
caring habits: supporting, encouraging, listening, accepting, trusting, respecting, and negotiating differences.
These are the exact habits that I wanted to implement in my class. I cared less for rewards and punishment
and focused more on the idea that a teacher could not forcefully make a student behave, solely with the use of
punishment and reward. Instead, I focused a lot of my classroom management on establishing positive
teacher-student relationships which would guide the students into making positive behavioural choices. I had
always chosen to provide empathy when providing consequences (Fay & Funk, 1995). I demonstrated solid
respect for my students by staying calm and showing the student that they oversaw their own learning
and/or choices. This has always worked for me. The students were aware of the rules in class, and we had
built mutual respect with each other which helped the classes run smoothly.

With my need to build trust with my students and the desire to create an environment that felt like home,
where the students had a sense of belonging (Brendtro, et al 2006), I cared less about sticking to the lesson
plan/syllabus and instead allowed the lesson to ebb and flow with the input from students. I constantly
encouraged my students to share their ideas and own experiences with the class. However, I can see now that
just as the students bring different experiences to the classroom, they also experience the classroom in
different ways. Perhaps some students did not enjoy this free nature of the classroom and would instead
rather have more structure. I could name a handful of students who seemed less engaged in my lessons, and
who didn’t contribute as much as their peers. Critical self-reflection refers to the process of questioning one's
own assumptions, presuppositions, and meaning perspectives (Mezirow, 2006). I remember reflecting on
these students a few times throughout the year, but as we are learning online – it is harder to interact with
the students out with the classroom environment – they can simply not reply to my advances. I had therefore
naively correlated these students’ lack of enthusiasm with an unwillingness to learn, instead of reflecting on it
and getting to the bottom of the problem. In this writing, I will explore self-confidence/self-belief and how to
foster this in class and touch on the ideas I implemented to make my classroom a more positive place, for
everyone.

Reflecting on my own school life, my classroom was more than a classroom and my teacher was more than a
teacher. I think therefore fostering such a positive learning experience is so important to me. Thanks to my
teachers, I am now a very strong individual. I love what I do and how I do it. This notion of self-belief and self-
worth is something I am so keen to share with my students. Fay and Funk touched on this idea of self-belief,
writing that “human beings will perform for the person they love. If a person loves himself, he will do it for
himself. If he does not have that high self-esteem or belief in self, he will have to do it for someone else until the
time comes that he does love himself” (p.20). I immediately can relate this notion of ‘belief in self’ back to my
classroom- I know that not all my students have developed this confidence and self-belief yet and those who
haven’t, are the same students that are participating less. Most of my class are very confident and so keen to
share their ideas with the class and I worried there were elements of my class which made the students who felt
less confident, retreat even more.

The first thing I wanted to do was to find out if my assumptions were true - was there something about my
classroom that made some students feel uncomfortable? I began to observe more of my co-teachers lessons and
noted the same thing in her classes – the same few students weren’t participating; they weren’t turning on their
cameras and they weren’t responding. However, I knew that, and my ESL teacher had very similar teaching
styles. We were both very energetic, the class was very free and there were a lot of opportunities for children to
share their ideas freely. Cultural norms dictate very different lesson structures, and so I asked permission to
attend and observe one of my classes’ Vietnamese lessons. I could see and hear instantly more of a switch in the
classroom. In that – the students were still participating in the class – but it was very much more teacher-led.
And there was less free talk/opinion giving. This has never been my teaching style, but I could see that the
students that were not participating in my lessons were participating in these lessons. I didn’t want to assume
this was a language problem, as my students speak English fluently and instead, I focused on the differences in
teaching/classroom environments that made those students want to participate more. While I didn’t want to
switch up my teaching style so drastically, I did know that I had to implement some different ideas to create a
positive classroom environment that harnessed all students’ self-belief and self-confidence.

I know all of my students very well by now and I knew that the students who were not participating in my
classroom were the students with lower self-confidence. My classroom has a lot of big characters, and most
students aren’t afraid to speak up. Self-confidence is very necessary for a student to take risks and engage in
learning activities (Kanza, 2016). I wanted all of my students to feel at home in class, I wanted to foster that
sense of belonging. As Rubio (2007) stated that students’ self-confidence can be lowered due to students’
anxiety, self-insecurity, fear and feeling of being apart from society (Rubio, 2007). Of course, this lack of
confidence is not only upsetting to see – but it also affects the student’s overall grades, and this is something that
is so important in the context/setting I am teaching in. As Norman & Hyland (2003) state confidence is a factor
in learning which can have effects on students’ participation and progress. Confidence is one of the attitudes
possessed by everyone who has a positive outlook on himself and his situation. Confidence is the belief in self
and self-ability, a mental attitude that trusts or relies on oneself. Therefore, efforts should be made to improve
student confidence.

I knew there were some ways to help these students feel more confident in class, the first of which was to use
more of a collaborative learning model. According to (Laal & Laal, 2011), collaborative learning is learning that
involves grouping students to work together in solving a problem, task, or product creation. Students in the
group decide and find out for themselves how they are solving a problem, task, or product without direct
direction from the teacher. Therefore, the freedom given in collaborative learning really emphasizes students to
actively participating in joint tasks. This will certainly make students better understand the concepts they are
learning and can develop student self-confidence. In addition, Adams & Hamm (2010) have an opinion that:
Collaborative learning of this type is effective because the framework of the strategy is good for all students.
Goodsell et al. (1992) stated that ideally, collaborative learning makes students more focused on expressing
ideas in the classroom. They build their confidence and expertise in expressing ideas they have in learning when
answering questions, listening carefully and responding to questions from other friends. They build their ability
to stay focused, maintain an idea, build relationships with some students and learn how to politely reject or
accept other students' opinions.

I also knew that a simple way to improve my classroom environment would be to create more order and routine
for my students in class. The students are aware of the rules in class and, as mentioned early there have never
been any huge problems with misbehavior. However, I decided to set the rules for the class and keep reinforcing
these at the start of the lesson. Wong, Wong, and Seroyer (2009) write, “Effective teaching is all about teacher-
student relationships. The easiest way to build relationships with students is to use a well-managed classroom
where students are on task, allowing you to spend one-on-one time with them” (p. 68). This logic is sound; it
makes sense that teachers will only be able to build relationships in a setting that is calm and under control.
Classroom management refers to the overall efficiency of the day-to-day flow of the classroom. Classroom
management was reported as having a 0.52 effect size, which is higher than the average 0.40 (Fisher, Frey, &
Hattie, 2017). The reasoning for this could be illustrated by imagining how a classroom would operate without
structure or any expectations. The efficiency of even one factor, such as a daily schedule, can make a difference
in how much students accomplish in one day. We would therefore start each day with an agenda and lesson
schedule. We would refer back to this after completing a task so that students knew where they were going, and
what they had left to do.
I found that both these implementations worked well in my class. Appendix 1 showed the increase in student
engagement over a period of three months. There was a lot more students raising their hand in particular which
would have been due to the increased intensity of classroom routine. the increase in participation has more
collaborative activities. Appendix 2 shows the increase in participation after creating a more rigid classroom
system. I will of course continue to use both theories as my teaching career progresses and I have secured the
role of grade 5 leader for the next school year which means I can stay with this class for a second year. A study
on the practice of looping showed the benefits of stronger teacher-student relationships; looping is a term used
to describe the instance when a teacher stays with the same class for two years in a row (Barto 1999). Barto’s
1999 article describes how students who had the same teacher for several years in a row performed higher on
achievement tests than students who received instruction using a different method, called platooning;
platooning is a phrase referring to the practice of different teachers specializing in just a few subjects, and
rotating amongst the students. With the platooning method, students would be spending less time with each
teacher. This simple comparison highlights the idea that teacher-student relationships can boost students’
achievement.