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Building Classroom community to support deeper learning

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Christie Mudd

christina.mudd@jefferson.kyschools.us

@cmudd19

Deeper Learning Resource Teacher

Curriculum Design & Learning Innovation

Alan Young

alan.young@jefferson.kyschools.us

@alwaysthinkin62

District Resource Teacher/Project Manager - JCPS Educator Growth System

Curriculum Design &

Learning Innovation

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Why is it important to build classroom community?

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Creating a School Community

Relationships, care, and connectedness are essential conditions for learning.*
“Creating Context” and “Cultivating Community” support, drive, feed, deepen, & accelerate learning - individually and collectively - AND are an integral part of the learning itself! (Go slow to go fast AND go deep to last)
A sense of Belonging and a sense of Becoming ground our sense of Being
Community is the wellspring of identity, competency, agency, and well-being
A caring community is the difference between surviving and thriving.*
Together Everyone Achieves More

The Power of Relationships in School

8 minutes - Alan - *Learning is fundamentally “social.” It happens primarily and is experienced as a relationship - certainly with others and the “other” that is not our “self,” but also our relationship to things, ideas, experience, the environment, change, and even to our selves. We exist “in relation to” that which is not our self AND to our self. And this is a process over time, space, and interaction/connection. SO in order to really do learning well, we must pay attention to the relational nature of learning itself and to the context in which it occurs between learners, sentient, human beings, in our case. So we must pay attention to the learners, the people, and how they exist in community if we ever think we will jump efficaciously to the “learning.” Too often, we jump to the learning, the content, the teaching of it and miss the most fundamental requisite of the “who and the why” before the “what and the how.”

*Most of the problems we face (or will face) are related to or affected by the breakdown of relationships and our inattention to how we treat each other and care for each other - individually and collectively - and the welfare of our community. AND most of the good and greatest things we do are the result of applying our learning, care, agency, and practice i.e. working together. Source of meaning, joy, impact

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Edutopia

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Getting to Know your students

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“Building solid relationships with your students is arguably the most important thing you can do to be an effective teacher.

It helps you build trust so students take academic risks, allows you to better differentiate for individual needs, and prevents the kinds of power struggles often found in poorly managed classrooms.”

-Cult of Pedagogy: A 4 Pt System for Getting to Know Your Students

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Getting to Know your students resources

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Building Trusting relationships in our classroom community

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Get to know your students
Protect the student’s self esteem
Build goodwill on good days
Listen to students
Be consistent and follow through with promises
Be vulnerable and own mistakes
Share your story and model self reflection

5 Tips for Better Relationships With Your Students

Photo by La-Rel Easter on Unsplash

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Using authenticity to Build trusting relationships

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Building Authentic Relationships with Google Apps

4 Authentic Leadership Traits that Build Trust

Five Practices to Build Authentic Relationships at Work

Be Genuine
Be Vulnerable
Be yourself/Share yourself - Draw from your own experience/Let others share too!
Share some of your layers/Share some of your mistakes/Share some of Passions/Show some of your challenges/Share some of your quirks
Be Empathetic
Be Present
LISTEN deeply & ATTEND fully
Create an environment that allows individuals to share, discover, explore, and practice who they are becoming
Practice grace
Create context/community that values self and other, becoming, difference
Embrace, Engage, Empower, Enjoy

Authentic Relationships

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Building Classroom Community to Support Deeper Learning

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Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Perseverance: Persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

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Building Classroom Community to Support Deeper Learning

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Critique and Feedback

Reflection and Revision

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Building Classroom Community to Support Deeper Learning

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Research

Technology

Tutorials

Technology

Examples

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How to keep your classroom community throughout the year

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Democratic classroom

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Ends and Means/Substance and Process/Values, Priorities, Practices, and Purpose

Dignity and the Common Good

Sharing power, solving problems, making decisions, improving life/community/world

Practicing and applying the skills, competencies, agency, and habits of democracy in a diverse, interdependent community/world.

Some classroom practices - class or townhall meetings (Forum and Focus), co-construction of class rules and norms, conflict resolution, micro-society, voice/choice/agency/compromise, etc.

A Call for Democratic Education

A Democratic Classroom Environment

“Be mindful always of the present you are constructing. It should be the future you want.”

- Alice Walker

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Weekly Circles: Building Community to Foster Academic Achievement

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Morning Meeting and class circles

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“Dialogue circles are gatherings in which all participants sit in a circle facing each other to facilitate open, direct communication.

Dialogue circles provide a safe, supportive space where all school community members can talk about sensitive topics, work through differences, and build consensus.”

-Dialogue Circles and Positive Classroom Culture

Circle for Change - (secondary and adults)

Types of Circles