No two students are alike, not even identical twins. What works for one student may not work for the rest of the students in your class. As educators we want the needs of our students to be met, we want them to feel like in this class they are being nurtured so that they can succeed. How we set up our class, and how we handle day to day incidents in our classroom can greatly affect students. Through some research I found that the majority of interventions either have to do with the set of up of the classroom: rules, clear expectations, changes in work settings, provide rubrics, making the classroom as a whole safe; or just building up a child’s soft skills, and recognizing each individual as just that an individual that has their own needs, and that they each have their own personalities and what treated as such.
Interventions are created to help behavior, understanding that some students may need more structure when it comes to their behavior management, others might need constant reassurance that they are doing ( usually popular with students that have anxiety, or students that have had/or are dealing with some type of trauma). Some students will need to cool down without being punished for needing to cool down. Getting to know your students is extremely important, because then you can know what you need to do and what intervention you can put into place to make your class successful for them.
I did find a Non-profit organization that is based in Milwaukee that has a list of 101 Classroom Interventions
They do have some bolded choices, but the one that was bolded that stuck out to me was, Smile. Teachers aren’t perfect, we have bad days too but if we don’t smile even on our worst days it would make the learning environment uncomfortable for some, because you may be their only source of positivity and for them seeing their teacher smile helps to relax. Our actions, our presence, our tone all impact the classroom it affects the students and the overall environment.
Not all intervention are going to work for the same people, because we are all different, we have different needs, we all learn different, we are all just different. Let’s embrace all the differences and make a welcoming environment that fits and meets the needs of all our students.
