According to Melissa E. DeRosier, PhD, of the Institute for Social Development and Stacey W. Lloyd, MPH, of RTI International, self-esteem is correlated with academic achievement. Teachers can assist or hinder a positive self image by the type of classroom culture they foster. The most successful teachers create classrooms with a sense of community and appreciate the uniqueness of each student. They give praise freely and have high expectations. They teach students the rules, help them learn interpersonal skills and give them the chance to practice in real-life situations. The entire classroom culture or environment is deliberately designed to improve student learning and self esteem.
Instructions
- 1 Build community with collaborative learning. Classroom and small group projects promote cooperation and build social skills by giving each student a task essential to the success of the project. One student may be responsible for organizing the research, while another may be responsible for illustrations or proofreading.
2 Value each student's unique abilities and contributions. Achieve this by publicly calling attention to something one student did for another, or privately. Displaying art or other work is another way to show a student you value his contributions.
3 Recognize and praise student success publicly. At the schoolwide level, quarterly honor roll assemblies may occur. The entire school assembles and the principal presents an award to each student who made honor roll that marking period. If students make the honor roll 2 out of 3 quarters during the year, they are invited to attend an academic banquet where the faculty serves the students and their parents dinner.
4 Provide students with disabilities accommodations that enable success. Students who are not able to write due to a physical or cognitive disability can use text-to-speech software to do so. Some students may need pictorial-text software in which a picture and text is typed. Others may be able to use software with a text-only output.
5 Ban disparaging comments from the classroom. This includes negative self-talk.
6 Utilize technology for teaching and learning. An article about the benefits of technology at the US Department of Education website points to research that shows technology can improve student motivation and self esteem. It may also be used to reinforce basic academic concepts.
7 Incorporate games into lesson plans. Games are especially useful to reinforce math facts. Multiplication or Addition War is a game based on the card game War. Deal a standard deck of cards, then have players turn two cards face up. Each player multiplies or adds his cards. The player with the highest sum wins the round and collects all of the played cards.
8 Create a student-centered classroom where students help each other learn, solve problems and help make class rules.
9 Focus on the number correct when grading papers instead of the number wrong. Seeing -12 at the top of a paper is an emotional let-down. It fosters feelings of failure and frustration. On the other hand, seeing 88/100 at the top of a paper promotes a much more positive emotional response. It helps the student realize that he can succeed, even though he got 12 questions wrong.
10 Teach classroom expectations explicitly and practice good decision making.
11 Model and teach active listening skills. If two students are arguing about something and go to the teacher, the teacher will stay calm and listen to what each student has to say. She will then paraphrase what she heard back to the student. The students can speak to each other, with the teacher present, and then paraphrase what they heard the other say.
