A Community of Learners: Building a Supportive Learning Environment
By Bob Lenz
11/16/07
Recently, a nationally recognized expert in classroom management visited the campuses of Envision Schools to help coach our teachers. Though he had plenty of advice about how we can make our learning environments more structured so student learning is accelerated, he was also effusive about the sense of respect he witnessed between students, between students and teachers, and between adults in the schools.
Like many visitors to our organization’s campuses, he sensed a strong sense of community. A learning community does not just happen; it is created intentionally at every level of a school and organization. At Envision Schools, we employ several strategies to create this type of environment:
Explicit Value
We are explicit that we hold community as a core value. We describe it in our literature, and leaders and teachers state it to students and their parents constantly at events, in private meetings, and in letters home. We also explicitly state to the adults in our organization that we are a professional learning community and that we plan our professional development to help foster and sustain our core value of community.
School and Organizational Structures
We organize our schools and our schedules to build a sense of community. Schools are organized by teams or families, in which a group of educators share a cohort of students. Teachers serve as advisers to sixteen students, and the advisories meet two to three times a week in our lower division (grades nine and ten) and daily in the upper division (grades eleven and twelve). Each week, teachers have three hours of common planning time with content-area colleagues and four hours of facilitated collaboration time with their team or family colleagues. We also build time into our master schedule for at least one community meeting (either by team, division, or whole school) each week.
We meet as a whole network of schools five times each year, and teachers collaborate and share curriculum and project ideas across our schools almost every week, either in person or virtually through email, instant messaging, or our Project Exchange online community.
Classroom Activities and Community Meetings
In the classrooms and advisories where we see the strongest sense of community and respect, we observe teachers regularly facilitating activities to develop these qualities. Most of these teachers greet their students at the door with a handshake or even a hug. These classrooms and advisories have norms or agreements posted prominently in the room. The norms (“Respect each other,” for example, and “Listen”) are not just words on a poster; teachers and students hold each other accountable to them daily.
Students are often organized in circles -- and often without desks. Every class begins with a brief check-in, during which the students and the teacher share how they are feeling, even if it’s just a nonverbal thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Teachers explicitly teach collaboration skills that help groups working on projects to be more successful, and they simultaneously build community. Teachers also confront issues of diversity, race, and class in the context of their curriculum, teaching collaboration while explicitly building a learning community.
Community meetings offer school leaders an opportunity to teach and build the whole school learning community. Each school has developed its own rituals and formats for their meetings: Some schools start each meeting with a chime and an inspirational reading. Others have students facilitate the meetings, and they begin with a quote of the day.
Schools use community meetings to address critical schools issues, to explicitly teach values such as community, and to share information. Sometimes, they’re just about fun -- like one featuring an adviser Hula Hoop contest. Community meetings also serve as an opportunity to showcase student performance in the context of a project. Though every school’s community meeting looks different, the outcomes are the same: Students and teachers feel more connected and part of a community.
As with most aspects of high-quality schools, building community begins with a vision and happens because the school leaders and the teachers intentionally design structures and activities to reach the vision. When our students graduate, we challenge them to lead the formation of community wherever they go, for the rest of their lives. Once you have the privilege to experience true community, you have the obligation to create it.
How do you foster community and respect in your schools? Please share with us.
Comments & Responses
Educate...Save our Mother Earth!
Not only the extinction of plant species itself is affected by the climate change.The first living thing that is affected without water existence is the plant group which is considered as the food manufacturer for the animals and human.. The World Water Forum just held a meeting. The World Water Forum just met for the fifth time in Istanbul (not Constantinople) to talk about the state of the world's water. The amount of water in the world seems to be receding. Before a shortage happens, most world governments agree that something needs to be done about it, even if it means taking out a payday loan or two to help out. Changes in the world water supply have been brought about by climate changes. The consensus among the political and scientific community is that we have to get every nation in on the World Water Forum. So why did Istanbul get the water works? That's nobody's business but the Turks.
Teachers & Substitutes
I am a recent graduate who is substituting. Although most of the faculty is willing to help or even offer a seat in the teacher lounge I have found that there is little the district is doing to foster a relationship between the teachers and substitutes, or the community and substitutes. I understand that I do not have my own classroom, but I am still working with the same children on a daily basis. I would like to see more of an effort to build a relationship to make substitues feel more comfortable and involved. After reading about the Professional Learning Communities, I have to wonder if substitutes and other non- full time staff should be included. Does anyone have this in their district?
As a substitute teacher you
As a substitute teacher you are not a part of a community unless you are somewhat of a community unto yourself. I have always been impressed with the subs I have met that are able to do just that. I feel that these modern day "Mary Poppins" types(male and female) have much more influence than they realize. They expose students to vastly different styles of teaching and caring. And they provide the possibility that at any time someone special can appear and make an ordinary day extraordinary. Your job is too important to wait for inclusion to come to you, you need to carry it with you from school to school, class to class,teacher to teacher and kid to kid.
Good Luck
Daryl
(Head Teacher and grades three and four)
Creating a sense of community
Building a community involves purpose, expectations, respect, safety, communication, and teamwork. Creating an environment that fosters these elements helps produce positive relationships and rapport between students, teachers, parents, and colleagues.
Something I am trying out in my classroom this year is a theme. The students were a huge part in picking out the theme, giving them ownership and choice. I liked having them be so active in picking out the theme because it is something I know they are interested in and will help motivate them.
The theme is sports and I am directing it to many aspects of my classroom. As their “coach,” I direct them in “getting in shape,” “practice,” “scrimmage,” and “play.” For my discipline policy I made an “Out of Bounds” bulletin board. It is amazing to see how naturally things fit into the theme and make it fun!! I am honestly still in the beginning stages, but already I can see improvements in working together, communicating effectively, and encouragement.
Community
I think a theme is a fantastic idea for building a classroom community! I have personally found that by first modeling how to care for my students, and then enforcing the expectation that each of my students will not only respect each other but be kind to one another, I have a classroom family. My students look at each other when the speak. They do not laugh when one falls, or answers a question incorrectly. They really and truly impress me daily with how much character they have. Personally I think by honestly caring for my students they learned to honestly care for each other. Some educators do not seem to think that the emotional/social aspect of a child's life is not their job. I feel as if it is crucial for success. With out this aspect your students will not feel the comfort level they must feel to fully learn whatever you are teaching.
Rural High School
I teach in a rural high school just outside Alliance, Ohio. We have professional learning communities. Each department meets twice a week for 25 minutes each time. Once a month, we have building committee meetings and whole staff meetings. This organization has great potential to foster a sense of community. The only problem is we seem to get bogged down in testing and analysis of test results that we don't have time to discuss strategies to address the results.
I like what Bob Lenz said about "norms" posted in classes and teachers greeting students as they enter. I will adopt those ideas for my class.
Our local library organizes a "One Book, One Community" project each year. They encourage several local high schools to have teachers use the book in classes as well as advertise to the public. The author comes for talks at a community location as well as at the schools. Being involved in this program seems to help build a sense of community.
Building A Supportive Learning Environment
As often heard so many times in Education, it takes everyone in a school setting to ensure the success of the students. I believe that collaborating with other teachers is very helpful. With me being in this profession for 5 years, I rely on my colleagues quiet often. Where I teach, we have a strong sense of community, we meet once a week in our various teams to discuss assessments, and any evaluations we have made. As far as parental involvement, we have some parents that will do whatever it takes for their child. My primary responsibility are my student's and whatever it takes, my kids are worth it.
support
It definately takes an entire school or better yet an entire community to provide all a student needs for success. Some schools are not fortunate enough that the teachers can rely on their colleagues for support. In this day and age of testing some teachers are pinned against their colleagues to ensure a competetive atmosphere. This makes it very difficult to prevent yourself from becoming burnt out. At the school I currently teach at I am lucky enough to have team planning with the other five fourth grade teachers daily for a half an hour. In this time I am able to see how my students are doing in comparison to the other students. We are able to share concerns, and share new ideas. This is very important for all of the students to become successful.
Teacher Collaboration
I agree with your comment, teacher collaboration helps a lot. My school has strong feelings on this as well. At the end of each year a groupd of teachers/staff memebers representing each of the 'groups' in our school sit together to formulate the master schedule for the next year. During this time (of talking and debating) our Principal tries her best to give each teacher on the grade level common planning time and lunch within minutes of each other so we will have two opportunities during the day to get together to share if we would like. In order to 'force' some that might not see this as a valuable tool, they require us to fill out minutes for each of our meetings. I think when people have the opportunity to share and collaborate - great (or greater) things can happen.
Clear expectations
From the first day of kindergarten I set the tone for community by informing my students that it is our classroom and we are all friends in a community of learners. Students are encouraged to help, listen to, and respect one another. In Pat Wolfe’s article Brain Research and Education: Fad or Foundation, he states that “The environment must be physically and psychologically safe for learning to occur” (2003).
Our school counselor introduced the cougar PAWS program last year and it worked great because all staff and students understood what the school rules and expectations were.
Play safe
Act responsibly
Work hard and try your best
Show respect
When a student was caught performing these tasks, they were given a small cougar paw to write their name and teacher’s name on and then placed it in a drawing. On Fridays a predetermined number of names were drawn. Winners were given a cougar pencil, their picture was taken and placed up on a special bulletin board in the lobby. Many of our teachers were glad to back up this behavior plan because we have not had any clearly supported plan in place.
Wolfe, P. (2003, Fall). Brain-compatible learning: Fad or foundation? Retrieved May 24, 2007, from http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/forum/fall03/brain.html
Reprinted with permission. From the December 2006 issue of The School Administrator.
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