The Importance of a Positive Teaching Environment

I really enjoyed reading about how to make a classroom have a positive environment. I really enjoyed it because I have been in classrooms that didn't have a positive environment and I hated that class. I also didn't learn one single thing, I went only because I had to, to make a good grade. On the flip side in elementary school I did have a teacher that really made his classroom a positive one. Mr. Livingston was my 6th grade teacher he was amazing! I remember when I first found out I would be in his class I was disappointed, because I thought he looked mean. However, on the first day of school I found how truly wrong I was to think he was mean. I was always excited to go to school. I knew that he really did care about me, and want me to succeed like he did all the other students. I was one of his last students he retired that same year. When I go home I will run into him occasionally and he still knows my name and visits with me. In the reading there is a list of things that help create a positive learning environment. While i was reading I realized that Mr. Livingston did many of these things. One is to COMMEND CREATIVITY. One of our assignments was to make a rocket that would carry an egg and somehow get the egg back to the ground with out cracking. Many students packaged their egg in styrofoam. My partner and I decided to strap a parachute to ours. On the day of the launch we were all excited to see whose would work. Ours was the only one. He made a big deal of it and showed it to all the other classes. He told us that it was a creative idea that no one else had ever tried it before they just assumed it wouldn't work.  Another thing he was great at doing was HELPING US KNOW ABOUT ONE ANOTHER. He wanted all of his students to be friends. I don't think anyone that whole year got bullied. He gave us opportunities to work together in groups. He always made sure that no one was being left out.