How should a classroom space feel?
What kinds of things can make it a productive space? A caring space? A safe space?
How can we all contribute to building community in our classroom?
What are your roles as a student? What are the teacher’s roles?
These are all questions we have started exploring as we reflect on our class agreements.
At the very start of the year, we brainstormed various roles and responsibilities expected from students and teachers. Several themes emerged from this discussion, and these themes are our Class Agreements. The agreements are:
- Mutual Respect
- Safety
- Right to Participate/Right to Pass
- Attentive Listening
- Appreciations/No Put-Downs
These agreements don’t happen automatically–they take work and collaboration on the part of each individual student and teacher. Because these themes can be quite broad, students worked in small groups to create Y-charts to describe what each of these agreements would “Look like,” “Sound like,” and “Feel like.” After the first round, we reflected on what each agreement meant, and what each group wrote–we discussed how we could be more specific with our descriptions. Then groups worked on adding ideas to two more Y-charts.
A couple of things I noticed during this group work:
- At first, students had a tough time naming specific actions, phrases, etc. to describe each of these categories. There were lots of notes about “Sounds respectful,” and so we really had to dig into what you would actually hear if you walked into a space where people were treating each other with mutual respect, for example.
- You might notice off-topic doodling or writing on some of the sheets. Some students noticed this, too. We discussed the idea of “respecting the work.” Especially when we are working in a group, it’s important to honour the contributions of others by offering our own quality contributions. I’ve also noticed this doodling etc on assignments. Keep the doodles to your doodle-book, and keep the assignments clear of clutter so they are easier to read. It is important that we communicate our ideas in ways that others can understand.