Cultivating a classroom environment

Scenes from my room: just put on some quiet jazz or nature music and you have the full picture

It's Saturday afternoon, and I am sitting in my classroom getting ready for the week ahead. You might think, Carrie! What are you doing? Why are you slaving away in your room when you could be at home relaxing?? 

What if I told you, I am relaxing? Workaholic tendencies aside, the environment my students and I have cultivated over the years in my classroom has made it one of the most relaxing, creativity inspiring places in my life. I am calm here, I can think here, my nervous system gets a reset here. I believe, I have passed this on to my students.

I've been sitting in on meetings these past few years. Meetings about kindergarten, meetings about play, meetings about instruction and practice. This past week, I was sitting in on yet another meeting which we were discussing all of this. We spoke about kindergarten and play based learning, and about setting up our environments, and this thought occurred to me: setting up my classroom environment is the single most important direct instruction I can do as a teacher. Teaching math concepts is good. Teaching literacy concepts is fine. But the single most important Teaching practice I can do is set up my classroom for learning. 

I thought of all of the lessons I want to teach my students and it all came down to this:

Create a space that is joyful, welcoming, and calm. Provide quality materials for the students to explore, and let them play. Don't micro-manage, work together to create community, be an example. Give them the time, the space, the freedom, and the trust they need, and you will see them learn.