Building community in the classroom is essential to creating a culture that promotes student achievement. I recently read an article giving a list of 20 tips to help teachers build community in the classroom. Below are 3 of my favorites from the list.
1. Teach Decision Making and problem solving
Students make numerous decisions each day. We hope that they make more good decisions than bad decisions. Most importantly, learning from bad decisions or failure help students to solve problems and find success. In order for students to be successful, they need plenty of practice and experience solving problems. Leaders who emphasize this can shape thinking and instill a growth mindset in their students.
2. Encourage self assessment
Allowing students to assess themselves places an emphasis on effort and learning. Additionally, it places trust in the students that they will be honest in their assessment. This kind of environment conditions students to remember that they will be accountable for their effort. As a result, the students will naturally encourage each other to give their best effort because the goal is for the self assessment to line up with the teacher’s assessment.
3. Participate in community service
Doing something good for others feels good. You will also find that it isn’t difficult to enlist the help of your students to do something in service of a worthy cause. There are numerous opportunities in your community to be of service.
You can read the full article HERE. I also want to add one of my favorite tips in regards to building community in the classroom:
Believe in your ability to influence the classroom environment
Nothing happens if you don’t first believe that you have the ability to influence what happens in the classroom. Teachers are leaders and are expected to affect the environment. You can’t make the students do anything, but you can have an impact. Embracing this fact opens up numerous possibilities and solutions that haven’t been discovered yet. A teacher (leader) with the right kind of thinking will search until they have found something that can serve as a worthwhile experiment to help motivate students to reach for success.
How do you build community in the classroom? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
MB