My Goals for a Classroom Full of Students

As someone who is going to be a science teacher, and someone who has been in science education classrooms for the last sixteen or so years, I can understand how important it is to have goals both for teachers and students.  These goals should push students or teachers to meet high expectations, but still be manageable or achievable for every student or teacher.  Progression toward these goals is also something that both teachers and students will want to see, so these goals should have a measureable aspect to them.  These goals should be well articulated and accompanied by an explanation of how we will determine if the goal has been met. 

Goal 1:  My classroom will one in which respect will demonstrated.

            This is one of the most important goals in my mind for any classroom.  Students who treat each other and any other person respectfully, any amount of learning is possible.  If student strive to reach this goal, there would be openness in the classroom because everyone’s ideas would be valued just the same.  When this occurs, critical thinking about ideas and coming up with new ideas, then proffering them and being engaged in classroom activities should increase as well.

Goal 2:  I will help my students to recognize that they are apart of something much bigger than just themselves, and seek to improve society.

            This whole goal is about getting students to look at things that are happening around them, and then transfer the things they are learning in the classroom to these happenings.  Seeing something that's happening, then using what you learn to fix it, or make something work better can be one of the most rewarding experiences in someone's life.  If we can get students to think critically about the events and environment that they live in and the concepts that they are learning about in the classroom, we may yet find someone to cure cancer or figure out how to travel faster than light.

Goal 3:  I want students to be confident in their work and interactions in the classroom.

            Confidence is espoused when students feel like their ideas and responses are valued.  Encourage respect, let the students know that what they are saying is worth it (writing down everyone’s ideas in a list as they give them, giving everyone in the class a voice in what’s happening, encouraging people look at things from a new angle, etc.), and it will be worth it.  Students will be more involved in classroom activities if they think that they won’t get jumped on if their ideas aren’t the greatest.  Dr. Kruse and I were talking about getting students involved, we talked about wait time – in my growing up years I was taught about the value of silence: taking time to organize your thoughts before you speak shows that you value fact that a person was willing to ask you about your ideas, and then waiting for them to respond reciprocates that you respect their ideas just as much as they respect yours.

Goal 4:  I want all of my students to exhibit critical thinking in their work, and responses.

            This ranks right up there with respect in terms of importance in a classroom – especially in a science classroom.  This skill is something that has pushed scientists to new understanding of the world around them.  This does not mean criticizing others ideas, or running them down because their ideas; in fact it means the opposite.  It means that you as a scientists respect someone else’s ideas to look at them and make sure that they have the best explanation possible.  This is how we as members of a scientific community make our ideas stronger and better, but to do things one must show creativity, curiosity, and communication with other scientists; we have to have a deep understanding of the content, and even what knowledge is as it is being changed.  Tying all those things together behind a the force of a critically thinking mind and anyone can be unstoppable, life-long learner.

Goal 5:  I will help students be able to demonstrate a high level of understanding of the course content and then be able to apply that knowledge to areas outside the classroom.

            Teachers always want students to learn the material that they are teaching.  Always.  But no matter how we try to get the students to learn something, we can’t force feed them the information and expect anything but regurgitation.  Fostering the curiosity and critical thinking, the interaction and cooperation; getting the students to have fun and be interested in the material – tying those things together is the best way to get students to a high level of understanding of the course content. 

Goal 6:  Creativity, curiosity, communication, and cooperation are imperatives in science.  I will encourage students to exhibit these when necessary to complete their work.

            How do you think we found out some of the new scientific ideas that have revolutionized the world as we know it?  People didn’t just follow some recipe, they try something new, they were creative, they communicated with people around them, they cooperated with some people and worked on their own for a while.  All in all they came up with something new – that’s what I call being creative.  But you can’t just come up with something and shout “Eureka!”  This creativity is disguised in many ways – everything from choosing how or what you measure, what or how you experiment, what conclusions you draw, how you analyze things.  A firm grounding in the subject material, the ability to think critically, and a healthy serving of respect, confidence and perspective those are the things that help put necessary creativity into our grasp.

Goal 7: Knowledge is a tool; I aim to show students what the nature of knowledge is and how to use it for their benefit.

            Having a tool but not knowing how to use it is just about as bad as building an atomic bomb and not knowing how devastating it can be.  We as educators need to show students that knowledge is something to be desired and isn’t just isolated for one area – what you learn in one area can be used in another.  Knowledge is a powerful tool and should be used correctly; it’s our job to help students see that.  How do we do that, just about the same way that I’ve saying: work at fostering all of those things that I’ve talked about in previous few paragraphs and the understanding of what knowledge is and how to use it.

Goal 8:  I want my students to be actively engaged in learning, and to do so I want them to set, and strive to achieve goals that the set for themselves.

            Getting students involved in their own learning experience is the ultimate goal for most teachers.  We want to see that students have that students know what knowledge is, the content knowledge, creativity, cooperation, respect, communication, critical thinking, and their perspective through their participation.  If we can get students to set goals for themselves and help them achieve them we empower them in their own learning which help them throughout the rest of their lives.

After watching and reading several materials from Dr. Kruse and adapting my experiences, these goals and their explanations would be something that I would put in a class syllabus that would be handed out to all of my students, but also posted in the classroom where they could be seen by everyone.  Doing this would ensure that these goals were always on the students minds – students would always be striving to achieve them.