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In preparation for the upcoming school year, I’m discussing my favorite strategies for building and sustaining a culture of belonging and community within classrooms. To do this, I’m turning a blog post I wrote 5 years ago into a podcast episode! Enjoy the original blog post below, and check out the podcast episode for an additional leader lens as well as ideas I’ve learned from brilliant teachers, coaches, and leaders in the field over the past half a decade.
One of the most common struggles I’ve heard talked about by and for new teachers is “classroom management.” I struggle with the phrase “classroom management,” and prefer to see my role as a teacher as cultivating a positive classroom culture. To me, this simple switch in language interrogates the idea that I am there to “keep students in line” or punish them when they break a rule. I don’t think that should be a central part of my job description. I do think ensuring a positive classroom culture is an extremely important part of my job description, if not the most important part. For more on this idea, check out Afrika Afeni Mills’s article “Classroom Management Reconsidered” and Teaching Tolerance’s “Reframing Classroom Management: A Toolkit for Educators”. If you’re still with me, I’ll share some ideas about my approach to cultivating a positive classroom culture. Here are my top 5:
Let’s break it down. Co-create class norms. This works best at the start of the school year, but it can be done at any time of the year—better late than never! It will help with student investment in maintaining a positive classroom culture. How do I do this?
Foster relationships. I love this because it is proactive instead of reactive, and it works! How do I do this?
Allow for student choice and autonomy and explicitly teach self-regulation. This one is a balance. Choice and autonomy are motivating and promote ownership of learning, but we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own without constant teacher intervention. How do I do this?
Restorative practices in place of discipline. Traditional discipline policies disproportionately negatively affect students of color and students with IEPs. Being suspended decreases the likelihood of graduation, and contributes to the school-to-prison-pipeline. Restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior in schools, increase attendance, and improve school culture and problem-solving skills (WestEd, 2016). How do I do this?
Shared leadership, specifically involving students in the creation of norms and learning activities. Students and teachers will buy in to norms and engage in class activities more if they helped co-create them. How do I do this?
If this is new for you, I admit, this is hard work, but I will also share that it has the power to transform the culture of your classroom. If you’re already doing this, invite other teachers to see your class in action! Share your brilliance and show other teachers that it is possible. To help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge, and discussion in your community, I’m sharing my Culture Playlist with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 178 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. I am so excited today to actually turn an old blog post written five years ago hard to imagine into a podcast episode today, bringing it new life, giving some thoughtful reflections on what I've learned since I wrote this and really all about cultivating a positive class culture. So something everyone's trying to do leaders are trying to support teachers in doing students are directly benefiting from. This is a foundational component of particularly the start of the new year, which is why I think it's such a great opportunity to dive in today. Let's get to it Cultivating a positive class culture. I'm going to talk about five specific ways that you can do this or, if you're a leader, that you can support teachers to do this. Or also really lead and support the positive class quote, unquote class or staff culture right In your staff and in your broader school community, whatever degree of community you are responsible for in your role. So, in preparation for starting the year, I think everyone kind of has those go-to strategies for building and sustaining that culture. I really want to center this on a culture of belonging and community, a culture of appropriate degrees of challenge. A culture of appropriate degrees of challenge, one that affirms all students' identities and staff identities, one that enables discussion of critical issues. Right again, this is also critically foundational, and so I will be kind of riffing on the original blog post, and you can check out the original blog post at our show notes lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 175. I can't believe it's episode 175 already. Okay, so as you kind of think about this episode and the ideas are percolating, I want you to also think about your specific role, as I just kind of spoke to the idea of being a leader. How might you put this into practice? Coaching teachers or with your staff, thinking of your staff as a quote unquote class, all right. So one of the things that I have heard a lot I heard a lot five years ago, I still hear a lot now, although it is shifting a little bit in its language is this idea of classroom management quote unquote. And classroom management is a phrase I don't really like. I think that we lead and lead through example. We don't necessarily manage. Although there are management aspects to a class, I think it's more about the culture that you create, where, if you create a beautiful culture that is positive and affirming and one in which everyone feels that they belong and are also responsible and a contributor to that positive culture. There are less management issues, and so I think, kind of, the goal of classroom management is ultimately to create the culture where there are less management issues. So I'm cutting right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. Right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. So I like this, this shift in language, for the reason I just described. But I think it's also important to reflect on our practice and have teachers reflect on their practice and, you know, also in conversation with family members, to reflect on what we think of in terms of classroom management and what we maybe remember from our classroom experiences K-12s, right about what class was like. And just because that was our experience doesn't necessarily mean that it is something we want to perpetuate, right? So I want to interrogate that idea that the role of the teacher is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep teachers in line, right, um, or punish them when they they break a rule right. I don't think that's a central part of a leader as a job description. I think it's we're cultivating this culture that we're all contributing to positively, and we're going to lean on each other and kind of call each other in when we need to to be able to right that ship, so to speak, but it's not like the most important thing that we do to call people in or, you know, hold people accountable if we've done the important work of building that foundation. Well, there are a ton of other resources that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea Africa, fad Mills. I linked to a blog post of hers in the blog post Classroom Management Reconsidered, which she posted, I believe, on Better Lesson website. Yeah, the Better Lesson blog and Teaching Tolerance at the time was their name when I first published this article. But now Learning for Justice has a reframing classroom management, a toolkit for educators blog post. That's pretty good, okay. So if you're still with me, here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the top five strategies, right, so I'm going to run through them super fast now and then I'm going to elaborate a little bit more. So here we go. Number one co-create class norms with students Super important. Do this also with adults in your adult communities. Do this with your staff. When we have agreements that we have co-created, we are more willing to be held accountable to them and we are more responsible and kind of accept more responsibility for the whole class abiding by those. Number two foster relationships. I think this is the number one thing that teachers can identify that they're really good at. Like I don't think we actually need a ton of support for teachers in fostering relationships. Because we came to this profession, because we love kids, we're good at fostering relationships for the most part. Maybe a strategy here or there is helpful. We know that this is foundational right. Number three allow student choice, voice autonomy, ownership, all the things. And to do that well, I think a kind of corollary to this is explicitly teaching self-regulation. So if students are struggling with self-regulation and I think of you know, just like my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right developmentally that my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right Developmentally. That makes sense and a lot of our students may have, may still be at that developmental milestone or they may be at a point that is later age, wise, um, and they should have kind of moved through that or learn those strategies. But they haven't. And so they need that support, um later in life that maybe they didn't get early on to learn that self-regulation, to then be able to take advantage of things like choice, voice, ownership, number four, restorative practices in place of punitive discipline. So this is also I think a lot of these also are a nod to larger structural supports that can be in place and then really enhance the teacher experience in the classroom when we have the larger pieces to support our work with individual students or small groups of students. If you don't have that, it is also possible in your class and I'll speak to that a bit. But just the idea that we want to repair the harm and we don't want to punish because students didn't do what we said right away. Right, we're not looking for compliance Again. We're building that culture of responsibility, accountability and and affirming that you know, you are all good people. We are all good people Right, we are inherently good. I think of Dr Becky Kennedy's good inside right. I am good inside and my actions are not helping the community at the moment and they need to change and I need to repair the harm that I've caused and I need to take accountability for that right. It's all the things. Number five shared leadership. Specifically, when I talk about shared leadership, I use shared leadership instead of distributive leadership because in education, distributive leadership often refers to teachers taking on leadership roles in the school, which I love, but it excludes students. And shared leadership is generally a more broad kind of all-encompassing of all stakeholders, lens on leadership and strategy for leadership. So that's specifically what I'm thinking of in not just co-creating norms right for the class but co-creating learning experiences, co-creating school policies, that kind of level of authentic voice that really makes a difference. So let's get into some of these co-creating class norms. You can do this in a variety of ways. I've talked about this before. I think you can really get students ideas on a poster, on index cards, whatever, in a variety of ways, right. You can't have them do this digitally on a Google doc or a jam board, although that's sunsetting. Whatever tech tool you want, you can have a gallery walk of posters. Lots of different ways. You could do a circle protocol, but you want to make sure you reach consensus. However, you get all the ideas. We got to streamline them down. We don't want like 45 ideas. How do we decide on the final five or whatever number is memorable for you? So we had to collapse them together, condense them, and we have to agree. So I would use a protocol. I like fifth to five, anything. Three and above is consensus. Great For younger kids. You could use thumbs up, thumbs down. We need everybody to have thumbs up and then talk about it if we don't right, if we don't have consensus. I also think it's really important and something that I've learned since the publication of this initial blog post is that we have one specific norm or agreement, that is, an accountability agreement. So how will we hold each other accountable? And then I also have learned in this past year a really helpful concept of accountability, like what are the baseline assumptions and I can't remember who to give credit for this too, but baseline assumptions, this is an important concept that we are saying. For example, I think the example that this person had used was like we believe all people deserve food, water and shelter, right, or something like that, like what are the basic assumptions about humanity and conversation and whatever, and so like mine is usually dignity, like every human deserves dignity. So we're going to craft our conversation agreements and our class agreements based on these baseline assumptions that either I, as the teacher, can come in with or you can kind of build with students prior to doing the norm generation. So I like this idea as kind of an additional piece to what I initially thought of. I also think you know these are not static, they're ever-changing. Return to them again and again, anytime you have an important class discussion. Return to them. They are not like a one and done at the start of the year. Okay, number two, let's go to relationships. Here are the ways I like to do relationships. I had class circles regularly. One 60 minute circle a week was. I was very fortunate to have 60 minute class periods. But you know, having that regular time and attention where we all look at each other. We all look at each other in the eye, we all pause and listen to what one another are saying or sharing, and I think you know designing those circles specifically to foster relationships. Share something of yourself. Story of my name is my favorite right. Everyone can usually say something about their name, their nicknames, do they like it? You can do appreciation circles. I use the values in action website to their 24 character strengths kind of give us a vocab bank of appreciation things we could appreciate about each other. Basically, any topic you're doing, you can invite students to share a story about that concept or theme. You know. Whatever it is a question that they have, how are they doing on the project, what's a challenge they have? There's a lot of things where students can kind of be invited to storytell. I also think it's really important kind of to know and I forgot I had gone into this in this blog post but this idea that relationships and content knowledge are mutually exclusive is just a false dichotomy. Right, you can do both. As I said, talk about the theme, invite students to share a story about the topic you know, draw connections to current events, life experiences, other classes, like have them do what is actually a harder, like a higher DOK level, higher Bloom's taxonomy level, work right Activity is like building those connections and solidifying those pathways. That's going to be great. I also think you can do like specific non-content related stuff like social, emotional skills, work habits building. You know ways to resolve conflict and repair harm, building empathy or something right? I think there are definitely spaces for that as well, but don't think that they're mutually exclusive content and building relationships or building social emotional skills. Next, allowing for student choice and autonomy, ownership all the things. I think it's really a balance right. So we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own and, honestly, we benefit from that. So, as educators, we have to do less when the students can take on more, and they're not going to be able to take on more until they have that self-regulation piece. So it's kind of like a we don't want to support too much, right. That's the whole idea of scaffolding is we support until they don't need it anymore, and then we have to remember to take it away, and so I think it's really just constantly being aware of what your students need and that some students are going to need this scaffolds longer, and that's the whole concept of personalized learning and just to kind of be thoughtful about that. Independent work time is a really good opportunity for students to be able to work on what they need. Here's a reflection that I've had since writing this blog post. A lot of schools have identified this as an important thing and they have created time in their schedules to do it. Awesome, and in talking to a lot of the teachers that are responsible for that time, it doesn't always feel meaningful. Sometimes it does. Many teachers have reported to me that it just feels like a bit of a waste of time. They might be working on, you know, a computer program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others. Program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others, but standardizing. You know, all students are going to work on IXL for this 30-minute block. That might not actually be what that student needs. Yes, everyone needs literacy support, but many students might be getting the literacy support that they need in their class to be sufficient, to be on grade level, to be whatever, and they actually really need something else. They actually really need an opportunity for social connection. Their mental health is suffering. They need an opportunity to have a group counselor, facilitated session or something right. So I think being able to truly give students what they need is at the heart of this and not okay, we're going to standardize the time for it and we're going to standardize what is being done in that time, because the whole idea is not standardization, it's personalization. Not to say that IXL or any other tech-based stuff is not going to help students. That is a great way to differentiate and personalize within a topic or area as best as you can for all of those students. So not at all to say if you're doing that, that that's bad, but just give some thought behind it. There are other ways to insert. You know, choice support, different learning styles. I love choice boards, the idea of inviting students to say, hey, you can learn about this topic in these three ways a video, a article, you know some other way. You can do a little mini lesson with me in a small group, right? So the process of how they learn, but also the content. Can they be content specialists? Can they subspecialize within a broader umbrella topic and be the experts in this subtopic that they're super interested in? Their peers might not be. You might not have, you know, all the time in the world to go into all these subtopics and this is where students really get to shine. Also thinking about, like standardized tests. I've done a lot with investigating history as a curriculum recently. You know there are these assignments that exist in the curriculum. As part of the curriculum, they they could be adapted and they could be, for example, a you know five sentence paragraph or something Great. You could also verbally share that with me and I would still get that. You could do a claim, evidence and reasoning. Right. If that's what I'm grading, I don't necessarily need or assessing I shouldn't even say grading but assessing I don't need you to necessarily write it out, right, you can tell me how would you like to demonstrate mastery of the things I am assessing? And if you can do it in a creative way, great, right. So give that option of product in addition to process or content. So I think also, you know, having some sort of wall chart, anchor chart, standard reminder of students as they're engaging in these really student-led activities, that what I need time, that choice that's given to them. Students are in 10 different topics across the room. There is not maybe a person they can go to to get help. Maybe you can't be running all over the place trying to help them. I think it's really helpful to have like a three before me list or I had like one that was 10 before me but, right. For example, don't know what you're doing, like, look at the rest of the class and ask the class, me and Google answer your question, google it right. So, whatever the system is, whatever the things you want students to do before they raise their hand to ask you for help, just remind them of that in a really gentle way. If they're shouting your name every two seconds, just point to the anchor chart, the poster on the wall, you know whatever it is. Have a little hand signal that reminds them. I think that could be really helpful. It's just like this gentle reminder, and not just reminder of what they can literally do, but in in, you know doing some like sleep training and stuff with my toddler. I've been thinking a lot lately of you know this. The importance of and Dr Becky Kennedy talks about this too is like we believe you can do it Right. So if I'm lingering around a student, I might be demonstrating to that student. I don't think you can do it on your own. I'm just waiting for you to ask me for help, right? But if I move away and I say, hey, three before me, you got this. I have faith in you. I'll be back soon to check. I'm here if you really need me, but I know you can do this. That conveys a very different message and we have an opportunity for students to decrease their dependence on teachers for that, like minute level support, like the day-to-day, like small stuff. They can do that on their own and then, when they really need us, we can step in. I also think again, as you think about your role in your school, think about the educators, the adults who also would benefit from things like this. I believe you can do it. I trust you. Here are the supports Go do the thing. I'll be here. If you mess up, it's okay. Like we're going to, I'm going to be here, we're going to get through this, but you can do it. I believe in you. I want to give you autonomy. It's one of the reasons that teachers leave the field so much I've seen some really interesting research on this right is that there is a lack of autonomy and trust, and so giving that, whenever we can, to students and adults is really critical. All right, restorative practices in place of discipline. We know that traditional discipline policies disproportionately affect students who are Black, brown, indigenous, students with IEPs. We know that Black girls have been suspended for the same behaviors that white girls have gotten any punishment for. There's so much inequity in this and I honestly think that we as a society are moving in a good direction here. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, because I actually do see this shift, or at least this recognition of this, as being important. Is it done well? I mean, that's another complication, but restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior, increase attendance, improve school culture, problem-solving skills. It's good, right, we know this, and so to do this, I think it's good to have a culture of circles, where you do circles already. Then you can have a restorative circle with the whole class when necessary. You can also have a restorative conference, one-on-one or in small groups of students, where you're basically inviting students to speak from the eye. I've had episodes on this in the past. You can go check those out, but in the end the participants are really wrapping up by saying how they can act to repair the harm. So really good stuff there. Having again a system-wide place in your school is great, but you can do basic things like that in your classroom if you are an individual classroom teacher or if you're a teacher leader excuse me supporting an individual classroom teacher who wants to do this when you don't have the whole staff behind it yet. Finally, shared leadership, specifically thinking about, you know, students in this, in your class. Again, we can co-create norms, co-create learning opportunities, giving voice to the process, product and content of how they're learning. We also can really leverage street data, or what I've been calling student experience data. So again, that's from Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir, thinking about how we learn from students what their experiences are and invite them to share those with us and, if they'd like, invite us to share the actions that would make their experience better, better and then implement it. I think a lot about Lundy's kind of four areas of student voice and thinking about how we don't just need the space that's like part one of four. We need the space created for students to share their voice. We need the voice, but we need to help facilitate it. We need to give students appropriate information, skill based training to effectively share what they're thinking or even come to the idea of what it is that they're thinking or that they need. Many adults, I know, don't necessarily know what they need in a moment of challenge. They just know that it's challenging, right, and so there's, there's more there as well, as you know, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit. And then I can't remember what the fourth word is that she uses, but really that we're coming back and telling students, yes, we can implement the thing, or no, we can't, but here's why. So we're giving that information. So those are kind of four things that I'm thinking of as I as I think about this shared leadership as well. Anytime we conclude, you know either a segment of learning, it could be a week, it could be a PD for your staff, it could be a unit, right. Anytime you can give some surveys or some, you know, exit tickets, something quick. That's just like what do we think? Please be open to all sorts of feedback here, but that feedback is probably going to be way more valuable than you know, not asking the question or just independently thinking about how you, as the teacher, thought it went. Students are going to be honest if we cultivate that honesty in our classes and they know that you're not going to punish them for their honesty, right? So I think the final thing here for me is this idea of shared leadership comes with this giving. I don't actually hold on wait. So this idea of power over versus power with is actually kind of a people have called it cascading vitality, right? This idea that when you open up the sharing gates, right, we are actually amplifying the amount of power. And a student who sees their peer as successful, they're now going to think that they can do it, and all of these things. So we're not necessarily giving up power when we are sharing. We are in the distributive language distributing, yes, but also we are just 10x-ing the amount of power in the space, right, because everyone holds onto their own power and it becomes this generative force for creating and creating and creating this kind of life of the community. And your answers? Right, we talk a lot about adaptive leadership on this podcast. Your answers to these big, longstanding challenges are crowdsourced from the people closest to the pain, in the words of Ayanna Pressley, right? And so, if they're closest to the problem, we need their input and their feedback. Again, I'm thinking adults from a staff lens, students from a class lens. This is where your answers are going to come from. So we need to just cultivate that willingness on our own part to hear it all, to sift through it and again return to students or staff and tell them this is why we can't implement this if we can't, and this is how we're going to move forward with your idea if we can. So this is potentially hard, challenging work, particularly if you're a new teacher and you're like what I have to do all these things. You don't. These are ideas. Take one nugget, run with it, come back for more when you're ready. If you are a leader supporting a new teacher who might be overwhelmed, share that sentiment. Right. You can identify as well the places where this is going well, the places in your school community where a teacher or a leader is fabulous at creating a thriving, positive class culture, one where students are willing to make mistakes, eager to learn from each other, sharing openly and honestly, and people are receiving it well and non-defensively. There's tons of empathy all around. Everyone's identities are affirmed. Right. Find those places and invite teachers to go see that in action, or set up a success. Share where teachers get to share what they tried and how it worked. And what was that? Student impact data, right. What does students say about this? What was their student experience of this lesson or this thing that you've been doing and once we foster all of that, we are going to be thriving all around. So, to help you build and sustain a culture of that, we are going to be thriving all around. So to help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge and discussion in your community, I'm going to go ahead and share my culture playlist with you for free. I created it earlier in 2024, and realized I don't think I've ever shared it on the podcast, so it's in the blog post for this episode at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog slash 175. It is going to give you all of the things that you need to build and sustain this culture. There are so many resources I'm guessing around 60. There's so many podcast episodes, youtube tutorials, templates for you in there and it is completely free. Go grab it. Let me know how it goes and reach back out if you have questions. Until next time,
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
August 2024
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