How To Build Classroom Community; It’s Not What You Think

Years ago—I was a fourth grade teacher at the time—the principal mandated every grade level to choose one way to build community in their classrooms. We had to agree on something as a team, and then follow through with the idea for an entire school year.

Dubious of the assignment’s value, the other fourth grade teachers and I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Since letter writing was a grade level standard, we chose to do weekly “kind” letters.

A kind letter is just what it sounds like. It’s a letter of kindness written by each member of the class to one particular classmate. A different student is chosen each week to be the recipient of the letters.

The sole guideline, other than proper letter-writing form, was to write something you liked or admired about that person. It’s similar in principle to passing a Beanie Baby or stuffed animal around in a circle while each student shares his or her appreciation for another member of the class.

The idea being, if we focus on being nice to each other, it will encourage community-like behavior. This is a popular notion today among educators. And there is nothing wrong with it. It’s nice to be nice.

But it’s a weak community builder. Being nice is the result of a strong community; it’s not the cause.

Internal Motivation

Building classroom community is teacher-speak for saying that we want our students to have camaraderie and teamwork. And like so much in education, the way we go about trying to attain it is backwards.

Being nice, kind, and appreciative are wonderful traits, but merely telling students to be nice or making them pretend to be nice via kind letters and community circles carries little meaning because it doesn’t come from the students themselves.

There is no internal motivation.

Attempting to build community this way, therefore, is a waste of precious learning time. You’ll end up constantly harping on the importance of being nice, but with little to show for it.

The whole idea of having a strong community is that we want our students to act without prompting. We want teamwork and camaraderie to be who they are and how they choose behave, not something foisted upon them by the teacher.

Three Conditions

Basketball player Lisa Leslie retired in September of this year after 12 years in the WNBA. When asked what she would miss most about leaving the game, she didn’t mention the experience of winning two league championships, three MVP awards, or four Olympic gold medals.

Nope.

She said she would miss the camaraderie of being with her teammates. The close bonds she developed during her career meant more to her than any of the external rewards she received.

But can’t she find similar relationships outside of basketball?

Unfortunately no. There are conditions that members of an athletic team are forced to confront that, when nurtured, have the unique power to build a loving and caring community.

The good news for teachers is that these conditions can be replicated and incorporated seamlessly into any classroom.

The conditions are:

1. The presence of an enticing goal.

2. Every class member is needed to achieve the goal.

3. A chance of failure.

The collective action of pursuing a worthy goal builds camaraderie, teamwork, and togetherness like nothing else and will impact your students more profoundly than a thousand kind letters.

A quick example:

After winning our first game of Capture the Flag in three tries against our rivals from the classroom next door, and after shaking hands with the vanquished, my sixth graders danced and high-fived each other all the way back to the classroom.

Students who in previous years would have nothing to do with each other were walking arm-and-arm and chatting excitedly.

A thirty-minute experience like this is priceless and will build community far better than coercing mumbled platitudes from students during class meetings. And the close bonds that are developed through repeated experiences carry over to everything they do in the classroom.

In next week’s article, I’m going to expand on these conditions and share specific ways you can use them to build the kind of close-knit community that makes classroom management an easier proposition.

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7 thoughts on “How To Build Classroom Community; It’s Not What You Think”

  1. Many of my teachers use comments like “look at what you did to my bookshelf,” “you need to clean my tables,” “come sit on my carpet,” etc. I feel that the word “my” should be replaced with “ours” so that students take ownership of the classroom. What do you think?

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  2. I think this is an amazing article and coincides with the fact that you need strong classroom management. This article may have not done well, because I notice that some teachers/admins are subjective and do not like to face the reality of what is right. The example of writing nice notes, sharing nice comments, etc is used wildly and uncontrollably by teachers and administrators. They want to believe that what they are doing is correct or do not know how to defend their tactics. So, they dismiss the message. Just a thought.

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  3. First let me say that I am not a competitive sport kinda person (so your example was off-putting) . . . I am usually only competitive with myself-as in “how can I get better at this?” I am not alone in this, I don’t think. So, while I appreciated your example, it would not work well for me and my classroom. So my question is, what kind of goal can we choose that would work well for every student in the classroom? Perhaps progress toward their own personally set goal(s)? Earning a collectively chosen class incentive? Where are you going with this?

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  4. I think you’re absolutely correct in your conclusion that our forcing “community” on students does not work. I like your idea of “Capture the Flag” and I am wondering what “next week’s” article was expanding on these ideas. Were there more suggestions of activities that could be used in a similar manner but may not be sports related? I think it would be really helpful to get a list of suggested activities – even asking your readers to send you suggestions to compile maybe.

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  5. You’ve actually got me thinking quite a lot now about what an “enticing goal” might be for a class if it wasn’t a competitive goal– beating another class. Probably building or making something together? One year my class sewed a quilt together. Another time we put on a play. An academic project that was really bonding was collaboratively building a giant model of a town. I’d love more suggestions too!

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