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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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