Habitable Atmosphere

Think about the places that you go that are uninviting they have an uninhabitable atmosphere. Uncomfortable settings like a hospital waiting room and the waiting room of the auto repair shop have very little attention spent on them. This proves just one thing to me that those in charge have no interest in providing a habitable atmosphere, a setting that makes people feel at ease (the magazines are the same as last year and for the children the crayons are nubs and the coloring books are full). My school experience was desks in straight rows and columns, seasonal bulletin boards and cursive letter examples above the chalkboard. The uninhabitable settings are rationalized with a statement such as “the students are here to learn.” This is no different than saying the patient or customer is here for us we are not here for them.
If I return to my earlier builder metaphor I expressed that the builder does not build one building out of one building material. The builder blends floor plans and building materials to give the buyer an aesthetically pleasing and as ergonomically soothing building as possible in doing this they are focusing on the end result providing a habitable atmosphere. Car dealers have a bad reputation because they are just interested in making a sale and collecting a commission not on making someone happy. The teacher that puts today’s lesson on the board, takes attendance, monitors silence and collects assignments; gives the school they work in and the other teachers in the building as well as teachers in general, a bad reputation. These teachers are cheating their students out of an education, the taxpayers out money and themselves out of a rewarding experience because their focus in not on the end result.
How you treat others and the examples you put forward as a person is how students, parents, and staff will regard you. Is this your profession or your job? People talk and students know whether you are serious about teaching or just doing it to get a check. Phonies do not fool students. Students know whether they are accepted when in your classroom. They know by your classroom ambiance, by how you manage the physical space, they know that your teacher resources are tattered and dog-eared that you haven't updates in a while, and they know when you are not paying attention to them i.e. how you are using the classroom time.
It is the professional teachers that provide a social and intellectual environment in which students can learn. Students long into their lives remember the teachers that foster a love of learning through their actions.
Doing a Internet search for classroom ambiance, I netted papers with topics such as, the better use of instructional technologies, rethinking evaluation criteria, or the relevancy of specific curriculum. I believe the first benefit of classroom ambiance is the making of a habitable atmosphere by a relationship between the teacher and the students at the interpersonal level. The face-to-face interaction between teachers and students is at the heart of the pedagogical experience, but a lack thereof is readily denied as a cause of the lack of learning by students. True teachers put their students first and the focus of their classroom is to expedite the learning process for all the students even if it results in more work for themselves.