Freedom in the Classroom

1. Freedom in the Classroom

2. Freedom to teach • Freedom to learn and grow • Rules without relationship equals rebellion • Boundaries

3. Create the most favorable conditions • Teacher is a stimulator and motivator • Teacher excites and directs • Student is an investigator, discover, doer • Good teacher focuses on students, not what he/she is doing • What’s important is what students do

4. Different world today • Culture kept kids within certain boundaries • Movies, music, and television encourage rebellion • Schools: where a lot of rebellion acted out • Teacher is not free to create conditions favorable for inquiry

5. Boundaries with appropriate consequences • Not power struggle, anger or frustration, lectures or threats, but love and logic • Love allows students to grow • Logic allows students to live with the consequences of their choices • Solution to their problems begins with them

6. They have to make the first move • Students understand logical consequences of their mistakes much better • Consequences not focused on relational consequences like anger, guilt, shame, condemnation, or abandonment

7. Teachers should be mentors to students • Two extremes “best friend” or “control freak” • Best is somewhere in the middle • When friendship came first passivity resulted • When relationship started with respect activity resulted

8. In other words boundaries equal freedom • Students must understand there will be appropriate consequences