Facilitating Classroom Success All Year Long

The first week of the school year isn’t just about what you teach, it’s about the foundation you lay for trust, fairness, and for getting jobs done. To me, instilling a sense of this success is akin to walking into a patisserie in a French city center.

Behind the glass, you know that everything there is going to be amazing because you’ve tasted each of these beautiful desserts before. Teachers who understand the importance of establishing a classroom culture of success know that what we do in the first couple of weeks pays off all year long. They will find a way to give a taste of that success early. As we say in my classroom, “When you taste success, you want more of it.”

Here are some ways I give my students that taste of success right from the start, and why it’s so critical.

A Taste of Victory

Any teacher who has ever watched a classroom celebrate a goal, or can remember as a student what it felt like, knows the magic of a classroom win. Therefore, I give a taste of victory to my students and do it early. This victory doesn’t have to be massive or important. Perhaps your students are the first to turn in all of their library permission slips, or maybe they’ve got the best lines walking to lunch. Maybe they’ve broken a record that your previous classes never could.

Whatever it is, I always arrange for the principal or vice principal to either announce it or come visit the class to inform us. We make it quite the dramatic affair, with treats to enhance the sensory details of the memory, and of course, the students never forget it. That is the point.

A Taste of Teamwork

Another experience you want your students to have is teamwork. Students need to have a taste of having a purpose and an identity. Competition drives many students, and others simply like to be involved with a collective group. Therefore, I always take time by the end of the first week for students to choose a classroom name. To create that name, try this.

First, make sure that the name is something you help to scaffold. Give choices and make sure you seek student input. Over the years, my classes have come up with some great names: Team Turbo, The Legendary Thunder Hawks, Silver Space Cheetahs, and Green Machine, to name a handful. Each team name brought us together and gave us a theme on which to build success. My Team Turbo never quit. My Legendary Thunder Hawks became legendary for their grades and their speeches. My Green Machine put the pedal to the metal—rolling out to get the job done.

Use the name with the class over and over again. Send an email to the staff to let them know to use it too. Call your class in from recess with the name, and have interested students draw mascots and art associated with the team name. This is, for many kids, their first taste of what it feels like to be on a team. Let them know that their team is a winning one, and one you’re already very proud of.

A Taste of Stamina

With a classroom identity established, it’s time for the class to showcase their effort. At this stage, it is essential that my students get a first taste of what some call stamina and what I call indomitable spirit. In my sixth-grade middle school English Language Arts class, I give my students a taste of stamina by telling the class on the second day of school, “By the end of next week, you’ll have finished the first draft of your first five-paragraph essay.” As I look around, I can see each year that not everyone believes me. That’s when I remind them of their team name and what it stands for.

With the gauntlet down, I have my work cut out for me. Some students will make it regardless, but others won’t. And that’s OK, but it means that I need to support us all, so we can all win. I may need speech-to-text support, and with others I may need to do guided writing in small groups. The point of the exercise isn’t writing, it’s to give kids an understanding of what stamina can do for them. By the end of the first week, students know that when something is due, it’s due. They understand that the feeling in their gut, which they’ve felt in other times of their life, is also something to be found in my class. Determination, being indomitable, having a spirit of no-quit is part of our process.

Once you experience the ideas and concepts that lead to classroom success, you can add on many tasting samples and create a type of sample platter. Based on who your kids are, you can decide to add on many different concepts. Whatever you decide to do, give your students a sample of what outcomes you hope they’ll achieve all year long, and give it to them early.