In my last post, I talked about setting expectations. As essential as this is to a successful classroom, rules and expectations alone cannot create the class community necessary for high quality learning. Rules are effectively prohibitive expectations: they set the bounds of acceptable behavior. Standards of positive expectations must be established as a class culture that makes positive behavior normative. A supportive class culture sets positive expectations. Rules are simply the base upon which a class community is built, and laying this foundation should be done in a manner conducive to creating a supportive class environment.
But this is a complex and delicate construction, and giving yourself the best chance for success entails deliberate choices from day one. This ties back into the "hour one" anxiety I mentioned last week: building community, like setting expectations, should be a process beginning at the first bell, and without experience to draw on this can be rather daunting. I mentioned that my classroom mentor chose not to expressly cover her classroom rules until day three. The lens of building classroom community adds another dimension to analyzing this decision. Construction metaphors aside, beginning your relationship with your class by "laying the foundation" of rules sets a particular tone, which, combined with your teaching style, may or may not prove conducive to building class community.
So, instead, my Classroom Mentor began day one with her classes by, essentially, presenting each student with welcome letters. On the last day of freshman english, she has her rising sophomores write letters to the next freshman class to read on the first day of school. These letters follow the prompt, "What do you wish you knew on the first day of school?" Naturally, most of these letters begin with a description of everything these now seasoned sophomores were worried about on their first day. This validates freshman anxiety, and often gave good advice on how to overcome legitimate concerns and not to worry about baseless ones.
In terms of building community, though, these letters do something remarkable: most of them make a point of welcoming these new students to their new high school, including contact information of sophomores (who naturally hold more prestige within that community). This not only provides support to individual freshman in the form of welcoming words of older students, but effectively holds them accountable to the expectations placed on them in entering this new school community.
As a magnet school, it benefits from a certain baseline of implicit expectations, but the school is also very invested in creating a shared school identity which proves very conducive to creating community. In all of my freshman classes, each day about one third of the students are wearing school shirts. There is a definite pride in this shared identity, which impels students to strive for the excellence it calls for. In schools without this degree of school pride and identity, students may strive for prestige through opposition to school expectations. But with freshman held accountable to a shared identity (with shared expectations) by sophomores (who naturally hold more prestige), these letters effective preclude this response, and establish a standard for prosocial behavior on both the administrative and peer levels.
By enthusiastically admitting each freshman into their new identity as students of this particular school before they have even come to understand the school itself, the letters strive to establish a pillar of identity from which to derive strength in what is an uncertain time. Claude Steele writes about "disidentification," the phenomenon by which students find aspects of their identity inconsistent with academic achievement (1997). A shared class identity not only defends against disidentification, but ideally spurs students forward to achievement.
The significance of shared school identity is also consonant with Frederick Erickson's writings on counteracting latent cultural biases in education. A school identity guarantees a degree of shared experience among students, and, even if it can't completely counteract the various cultural biases sure to exist within the classroom, it at least validates each student's existence within that community, making it safer for each student to express their own identities and interact with others. The creates a cultural "third space," in which cultural expression supplements education, rather than "education" suppressing non-normative cultures (Erickson, 2001).
I think this model of "third space" class community predicated upon a shared school identity is a powerful model for building a supportive culture within a classroom. Thus far, our efforts at building classroom community have been very successful and I look forward to watching this process play out further over the coming weeks and months.
Works Cited
Erickson, Frederick. (2001). Culture in Society and in Educational Practices. Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives 4. 31-58.
Steele, Claude M. (1997). A Threat In The Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance. American Psychologist 52(6). 613-629.
So, instead, my Classroom Mentor began day one with her classes by, essentially, presenting each student with welcome letters. On the last day of freshman english, she has her rising sophomores write letters to the next freshman class to read on the first day of school. These letters follow the prompt, "What do you wish you knew on the first day of school?" Naturally, most of these letters begin with a description of everything these now seasoned sophomores were worried about on their first day. This validates freshman anxiety, and often gave good advice on how to overcome legitimate concerns and not to worry about baseless ones.
In terms of building community, though, these letters do something remarkable: most of them make a point of welcoming these new students to their new high school, including contact information of sophomores (who naturally hold more prestige within that community). This not only provides support to individual freshman in the form of welcoming words of older students, but effectively holds them accountable to the expectations placed on them in entering this new school community.
As a magnet school, it benefits from a certain baseline of implicit expectations, but the school is also very invested in creating a shared school identity which proves very conducive to creating community. In all of my freshman classes, each day about one third of the students are wearing school shirts. There is a definite pride in this shared identity, which impels students to strive for the excellence it calls for. In schools without this degree of school pride and identity, students may strive for prestige through opposition to school expectations. But with freshman held accountable to a shared identity (with shared expectations) by sophomores (who naturally hold more prestige), these letters effective preclude this response, and establish a standard for prosocial behavior on both the administrative and peer levels.
By enthusiastically admitting each freshman into their new identity as students of this particular school before they have even come to understand the school itself, the letters strive to establish a pillar of identity from which to derive strength in what is an uncertain time. Claude Steele writes about "disidentification," the phenomenon by which students find aspects of their identity inconsistent with academic achievement (1997). A shared class identity not only defends against disidentification, but ideally spurs students forward to achievement.
The significance of shared school identity is also consonant with Frederick Erickson's writings on counteracting latent cultural biases in education. A school identity guarantees a degree of shared experience among students, and, even if it can't completely counteract the various cultural biases sure to exist within the classroom, it at least validates each student's existence within that community, making it safer for each student to express their own identities and interact with others. The creates a cultural "third space," in which cultural expression supplements education, rather than "education" suppressing non-normative cultures (Erickson, 2001).
I think this model of "third space" class community predicated upon a shared school identity is a powerful model for building a supportive culture within a classroom. Thus far, our efforts at building classroom community have been very successful and I look forward to watching this process play out further over the coming weeks and months.
Works Cited
Erickson, Frederick. (2001). Culture in Society and in Educational Practices. Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives 4. 31-58.
Steele, Claude M. (1997). A Threat In The Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance. American Psychologist 52(6). 613-629.