Classroom Atmosphere in Classroom Management Class

     In this post, I would like to talk about the classroom athmosphere in my classroom management class.  The reason why I have chosen that topic to talk about is my satisfaction and dissatisfaction related to my expectations from the class.

     Firstly, I think that the teacher of the class is an experinced person or at least he knows how to deal with the class, he is good at that classroom management. He is also very good at observing and analysing the students. Most of the time he uses techniques that force students to work together and he tries to make mixed groups. For example, we rarely worked with the same people again and again. He listens and cares us. He wants us to make connections between what we have learned as theory and how we can apply that knowledge. He uses different kind of activities all the time and it is not something ordinary for me to join that class because I like experiencing new things. Before the lesson I always wonder what he is going to want us to do. I do not feel pressure in his class, I feel free to attend or contribute whenever I want. I do not feel nervous because of the idea that anytime he can ask questions directly to me about a specific knowledge. He never does it which I like most because I do not attend to the classes like this as it is my responsibilty to study or it is my wish to participate or  share my ideas with the teacher. When I am not forced to do anything, if the teacher is talking about something interesting I listen and join, and most of the time in classroom management class,  I do so because I like this way of teaching.

     Secondly, the teacher is aware of our needs as he wanted us to maintain objectives for the course. In a democratic way, we tried to write what we want to learn from that class. Even though we couldn’t agree about formulating it, we roughly stated our main objectives. To state again, for me, the most important objective is to be able to understand the principles that rules the education system of Europe and to gain a global perpective about education and classroom management. In our classes with Danish students, my expectations and needs were satisfied because I could see the differences in a multicultural class and I could see Danish students’  points of view as a part of European society. For example, one day we watched an interview about education in Europe. We were in the class  as Turkish students and Danish students were there too and we listened a German professor Thomas Ziehe whose main field is youth research, focussed on impacts of cultural modernizations and subse-quent changes in youth mentalities and learning environments, talking about the youth and effects of social changes in education system of Europe. The interview was in English, we all listened and later discussed about what we think and even  prepared a poster together  in groups. That experience was so inspiring for me because it was so different, I liked it so much. I felt really special. It was so nice for me.

     On the other hand, when it comes to our classes that we take alone as international students, there are some problems for me. The first problem is that we are eight Turkish students from different parts of Turkey and a student from Holland. It is not that much multicultural for me and when sometimes our Deutch friend doesn’t come to the class, we are just Turkish students in the class. It is like taking the same class abroad even though the teacher or his style is different. Turkey is a big country both in terms of largeness  of the land and the number of  the population. It is normal for us not to agree about our ideas because it differs according to our backgrounds, our family or our experiences. For example, what one states cannot be valid for anywhere or any condition. The things change according to place where people live or their social status or many other reasons. Most of the time I dont agree with my friends and I dont want our teacher to get a wrong impression about the society or the education system in Turkey  because there are a few things that cen be generalized. I also dont want to be in a position who always adds somethings or opposes or corrects the the generalizations that are made about Turkey by my friends. I know I dont have to critize what others say or state what I dont agree about but I cannot leave it like that because it is not right.

     The other and the most important problem for me is  that, my friends are in the mood of complaining about education system in Turkey all the time. I can understand, it is very normal to compare and contrast because we are going to apply the knowledge that we gain here in Turkey but this not just comparing. Most of the time it is complaining. Yes, there are some problems in Turkey, like in all societies, we should be aware of that problems and maybe try to find solutions but that should not be in the form of complaining like depressed people who repeats the same things over and over. When I hear that I get bored and angry because we are not the government here who is going to solve the problems, we can think about it to some extent but we do not have power the change everything here so it is useless and nonsense to talk about same things and especially problems all the time. I also thing that everthing should be assesed in its own circumstances. All of the societies cannot be same and  cannot be criticized from the same point of view in the same way . I dont like hearing my friends talking as if they have never experienced anything good in that society or education system because I dont hear much about the positive sides of our education system. I dont want to waste my time listening that kind of statements or the things I know very well, I want to learn something new.

     I dont know what can be done about that or I dont know if something should be done or not but I just wanted to share how I feel about the atmosphere in the class. I hope in the second term we can be in a multicultural classroom with different students from all over the Europe and I can learn different things. I hope I can achieve my goals about gaining a global perpective in the second term.I think that it will be interesting. We will wait and  see. Thats all for now.