Laying the foundation from the start

Laying a strong foundation for your classroom culture, whether you're a homeroom teacher, a specialist, or an interventionist, is a significant task.  No matter how long you've been teaching, you definitely map out those first few weeks of school to cover your expectations, procedures, and the ethos.  All your read alouds, morning meetings, and activities revolve around building this important foundation so that the school year can run more smoothly.

1. Simple guidelines with specific acceptable behaviors

For my students in grades 3-5, I begin with the foundational classroom culture statement: I want everyone to grow and succeed.  Which means we need to agree on certain expectations so that all learners have the opportunity to reach their goals.  This leads to the presentation of 4 simple guidelines: 

• Be respectful to the teachers, your classmates, and the school.
• Be responsible for your learning and your decisions.
• Use kind and polite words and actions.
• Make safe choices.

Then we discuss what these guidelines look like, sound like, and what they are NOT like.   This discussion is significant because students have absolute clarity on the acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, along with consequences.  After this, we sign a learning promise (behavior contract). You would be surprised how learners would adjust their choices after I ask them to pull out their learning promises. Very effective.

2.  Daily SEL check-ins to maintain connection with students

Part of the transition of coming to my small group learning space is grabbing your folder, your supplies from my cart, and completing a small social-emotional check-in.  This small, powerful gesture tells students that I care about them as humans first.  If students are struggling emotionally, I want to implement a strategy to support them so that learning can take place for everyone.  I also want to be able to document any patterns of behaviors and address them with my administrator or their families.

3.  Growth mindset to develop resilience and perseverance

Because I work with struggling readers, I want to establish that we all will be working through challenges.  We will need to try again, and we will need to practice (I like to include myself in the equation because I'm still growing, too).  For my students in K-2, I usually read The Dot and then we discuss it as an example of working hard and reaching your goals.  For my students in 3-5, we develop goals using growth mindset vocabulary.

All these resources are in my Back-to-School Classroom Culture Bundle.  It also includes a bonus file that can be used before you introduce your guidelines.

I'm not going to pretend . . .

I know that our children are really struggling with a myriad of issues and are bearing the weight of many injustices in our society.  Many teachers create this amazing classroom culture, yet still have students whose behaviors are extreme and unacceptable (to put it mildly).  My humble two cents:  keep doing what's in your power to create this culture of high expectations and growth mindset.  I pray that your administrator and the family units will collaborate with you in order to problem-solve those challenging situations.  And always talk to your colleagues for support and feedback.  When I begin to take certain behaviors a little too personally, my teacher besties always pull me back from the edge.