Mariyah Sanchez

23154 Del Playa

Santa Barbara, CA, 93117
(714) 441-2501
mariyahsanchez@ucsb.edu
06 December 2023

Dear reader,

This cover letter argues how different environments within the classroom can affect students'
learning capabilities. Whether you are reading this as a teacher or student, I'm curious as to
which learning environment worked best for you, along with which ones did not. While
gathering my research from various articles, I found that there are many problems regarding the
education system in today's society. Many of the problems are a result of strict classroom
settings. This makes for a constraining learning environment, leading to disengagement amongst
students. With this information, I created a presentation formatted as an instagram account to
reflect and learn from these situations within the classroom as well as provide possible solutions.

I chose this topic because personally, I always found it difficult to focus in a quiet/strict
classroom. I’ve always been a social butterfly, so being placed in this type of learning
environment was quite hard for me. I often found my mind wandering, unable to interact with
my peers. Because of these experiences, I began to further research the topic and that's when I
came across my central article by Lucy Wenham, “‘It’s horrible. And the class is too silent,”
(2005.) She argues that placing students in a silent classroom is contraining and causes anxiety.
This article is presented as an opportunity to learn from listening to the voices of students, such
as myself. The information that was gathered from the students suggested that talk in the
classroom is preferred. Wenham recognizes our needs and identifies the fault in the education
system; a one-size fits all implementation is not the right approach.

With the argument from Wenhams article, I used citation changing to select the other three
articles. “Citation chaining includes two steps: backward chaining and forward chaining.
Backward chaining helps you identify the sources that your main source is responding to…
Forward chaining helps you identify how the scholarly community reacted to your main source”
(Roepe). The first article was, “Getting the simple things right,” (2011.) by Charlie Taylor.
Taylor made a checklist that would help schools to improve behavior. The purpose of the
checklist is to prevent students from experiencing a constraining learning environment. The
second article I used was, “Disciplinary texts: a policy analysis of national and local behavior
policies,” (2010.) by Stephan Ball. This scientific article argues that educational policies are
interrelated and can dominate or subordinate within relations. The main goal is to achieve a
central and organized policy initiative in schools in regards to classroom management and
leadership. Lastly, the final article I included was, “Writing Environments,” (2014.) by Nate
Kreuter. He stresses the importance of physical and social environments and notes that writers
often fall into habits that are hard to escape. He also notes the importance of social writing,
writing with peers, and receiving feedback is beneficial. The same advice can be applied to
classroom environments.
All in all, with the information that I gathered I was able to get a better understanding of how
different classroom environments affect students' learning capabilities. Although I knew this was
a struggle I dealt with personally, it was nice to hear input from other students in the same
situation. I hope that my presentation can serve as an example to teachers and students that an
interactive learning environment is not always bad and is proven to be more beneficial.

Sincerely,
Mariyah Sanchez
 Works Cited

Ball, S. (2011). Disciplinary texts: A policy analysis of national and local behaviour ...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17508487.2011.536509

Kreuter , Nate. “Writing Environments .” EBSCO Host , Prakken Publications, Inc, 2014,

web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.ucsb.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=ea3

b0e53-9f47-46c2-afd8-1bcbb40ea2d0%40redis.

Taylor, C. (2011). Getting the simple things right - wigan, 2011

https://www.wigan.gov.uk/Docs/PDF/Resident/Education/Educational-Support/TESS/Ch

arlie-Taylor-checklist.pdf

Wenham, Lucy. “‘It’s Horrible. And the Class Is Too Silent’ .” EBSCO, Institute for Education

Policy Studies , 2019, web.s.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer.