There's a Plan for That

Classroom Culture is actually one of those interesting topics in education because the general consensus seems to be that good classroom culture is beneficial and bad classroom culture is harmful. However, conversations about why and how to facilitate the culture seem to stay very surface-level after that point.

One big reason for that is likely that it can be difficult to teach someone how to build a positive classroom culture. We can teach some strategies that work well on the surface, but ultimately, it is much easier to show someone how to teach a specific standard like division than it is to teach how to create culture.

Classroom culture is more than one size fits all.

That can be difficult to internalize because it can be easy towards the beginning of your teaching journey to feel accomplished the first time your classroom culture seems to be taking off positively. It’s deceptively simple to fall into the trap of feeling like you’ve finally got it together and figured out, only to feel like the rug is ripped out from under your feet the following year when your kids are so different than the previous year’s students and the strategies you tried last year suddenly aren’t working.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some strategies that will remain useful every year because there are. There are some beautiful strategies out there to help build your classroom culture. However, what I’ve found to be more useful in the long run is to identify the foundational pillars behind the scenes in all classrooms with positive classroom culture so that we can choose strategies specifically targeting building those areas in our class.

The most significant element for success in a strong classroom community is trust. And I don’t simply mean that the student trusts the teacher to keep them safe or to teach them the correct things, even though those are important. I’m focused more on trust that a student can open their mouth and say the wrong thing and still be safe enough to make that mistake without being berated. They should know that they will be encouraged and supported instead of being met with laughter and ridicule.

This safety has to be created amongst the students themselves by the teacher’s facilitation, not just something the teacher says once and expects to be a given. There has to be buy-in from the students for this foundational pillar to actually take effect.

One of the quickest ways for your students to struggle in education is for misconceptions to go unidentified. With all of the moving pieces in a classroom, you have to have students who are willing to share their answers, thoughts, and understandings out loud so that you can begin to identify and correct misconceptions.

The problem is that fear of failure can be paralyzing, and in a classroom, without trust that your peers won’t make fun of you, there can be minimal incentive to put yourself on the line to be potentially ridiculed.

This is one reason why facilitating that trust in your classroom is monumentally essential to your students.

Ultimately, it would help if you practiced what you preach when building trust in the classroom. You can’t say you’re doing something one day and start something brand new the next day, completely discarding the first idea. That’s not to say you can’t adapt things to meet the needs of your classroom, but it’s essential to remain cognizant of how often you are changing basic routines and expectations for your students.

This can feel almost counterintuitive, especially at the beginning of your teaching career, when you are struggling to develop strong classroom management and are jumping from idea to idea to try and find a “best practice” that will work in your classroom.

Consistency will be one of your most effective aids in building classroom trust.

Open lines of communication are also going to be a great support. This means that you are encouraging your students to talk to you and share things with you, and you are also sharing things with them. Now, this isn’t to say I’m encouraging you to cross personal boundaries because it is important to remember that your students are NOT your peers; they are not your friends or adults. They don’t need to see pictures of you in a swimsuit on your latest vacation. (And yes, that was a real-life example of what NOT to do. 😅)

I believe modeling an open line of communication can often allow the students to see and understand a little more about what is happening in the room, especially when there are routine changes, which can be powerful. Allowing students to have more voice in some of the primary classroom decisions can also be a great way to facilitate the start of a strong classroom culture. For example, if I have 10 minutes left at the end of the lesson, I may allow the students to choose between two different activities instead of dictating, “Next we will do…” If I don’t know an answer to something, especially concerning how a schedule change may affect us, I will be transparent about it.

It can be a considerable trust buster if a student asks how picture day will work around lunchtime, and you promise that lunch will be happening early because of picture day without being told that, and really, lunch takes place hours later. Is it going to ruin a child forever? No. But it does shake their trust and confidence in the things you say. Your relationship with your students should be transparent and say, “You know? I’m not completely sure how picture day will affect our lunch. They will probably have us eat earlier, but that may be incorrect. Once I know something for sure, I will also let you all know.”

Sometimes, this open line of communication means being transparent about disappointment and frustration and modeling healthy ways to cope with them. Remember, being an adult doesn’t stop us from being human, and for some of our students, we are the best models they will see for stability and how to handle themselves. If we only model handling positive emotions, then we aren’t strengthening the trust and life skills they need to be vulnerable in the classroom to build up our classroom community.

An example of this may be getting the class test results back for a unit test where the average has been disappointingly low. It’s fair to talk with the entire class about your disappointment and frustration. Not at any particular student directly, but it’s okay to say something like, “You know I’m disappointed by the results we got on our unit test yesterday. I expected we would have scored higher because of how we did during our review. I noticed that many of us in this class chose not to use scratch paper to work out our problems, which greatly affected our overall scores. Let’s take a few minutes to brainstorm ideas to improve our understanding of this standard. It’s important that we master it before moving on.”

What’s important to note in this response is that as a teacher, we are allowed to call out disappointment (without excessive berating), which makes us human. We can even guide what we may believe to be a significant factor or “at fault” for what happened. However, our focus is on more than just the issue at hand; it is more specifically on the solution we need to come to. Including your students in helping problem solve for the solution can be a great way to help build that trust and community engagement.

Another hallmark of a classroom with a strong culture is the idea that each day brings us a new blank slate.

Earlier in this post, we discussed that mistakes make us human. But it’s important to note that we also have to find a way to allow our mistakes to be put behind us for growth to occur.

If a student breaks every crayon in their crayon box during their math lesson instead of working on a color-by-number worksheet, choosing to remind them each day that you do a similar worksheet and that they don’t have crayons to use because they decided to break theirs the last time is counterproductive.

When you have addressed something, let that be the end, and you and the student can move on.

I’ve found this to be especially powerful when it comes to students who rotate through a departmentalized classroom each day. It can be really easy for a student who is having a rough start to their day to continue down a bad path because they can’t seem to get out of their own way when it comes to making poor decisions.
One of my favorite things to remind my students of when they entered my class was that I wasn’t there in their last class. I didn’t see anything that may or may not have happened. Any choices you made that might not have been intelligent have absolutely no bearing on any choices we can make in this next class that is about to happen.

I especially use this idea to be mindful of students who like to “report” why someone is pouting or angry. I don’t engage in that kind of conversation. I cut it off immediately and remind them that if the person who is upset wants to share with me what happened, they are welcome to do so if need be. But that it didn’t happen with me directly, and it didn’t happen to them directly, so it isn’t their place to continue to bring that into our fresh start in our next block.

This goes back to building trust with your students. By defending them from prejudice, you are showing that you are standing in their corner, even if it is from their poor choices impacting how you view them at that moment. Giving your students the benefit of the doubt and a fresh start can completely change their day, and you’ll be amazed by how far those trust deposits can spread over time once you plant those seeds.

Owning mistakes can be another great way to develop a strong classroom community.

We aren’t infallible. A teaching degree doesn’t mean you magically will never make a mistake. When we do make mistakes, take the time to lead through example and show how to accept ownership of the mistakes you have made.

You are allowed to apologize for doing something wrong; this isn’t a sign of weakness or a way to invalidate your position as a teacher. However, it does show that your students are essential and that you see how something you have said or done can have impacted them.

It’s vital that as we become more willing to apologize for our mistakes, we also become more focused on not making the same mistakes again.

Right now, my toddler is at a stage where she will come up and drop her toy on my foot, tell me how sorry she is, and ask if I’m okay. Less than a minute later, she will walk back up again and repeat the process.

When she did this, I quickly realized that her “apology” wasn’t sincere because she wouldn’t have continued doing it again if she had been genuinely sorry about dropping the toy on my foot. The more she apologizes for something she clearly has no remorse for, the less I believe her in what she is saying.

Now, this example is funny because situations like that are common with toddlers. We don’t trust that they have this whole apology thing figured out yet. But your students do believe that you, as the adult and role model in the room, understand the gravity and weight of making mistakes and taking responsibility for your actions.

Suppose a student is talking to me, and I’m multitasking, doing other things, and not listening when I apologize for not following along with their story and asking them to repeat it. In that case, I also need to still my hands and give them my entire focus. Otherwise, I’m using my actions to invalidate my words.

When you need to apologize to your students, make sure your words work in conjunction with your actions. This will help strengthen your classroom culture.

As your year goes on with your students, the time you spend, especially up front, to show that their voices are heard and matter and that you can be trusted to follow through with your promises will become especially noticeable. A strong classroom culture is built on the little choices you bring into your classroom. It’s in the way you make your students as individuals feel validated and safe. You can’t speak it once and then never come back to it, but instead, you grow the seeds of your expectations each day with your actions.

When we think back to our own classroom experiences growing up, the ones that are the most significant to us will typically be dictated by the type of classroom community that was fostered. The classes we remember negatively will have had the least influential classroom culture, and the ones we loved will have had the strongest and safest classroom communities.

In the comments below, I would love to hear some action steps you have tried or are planning to implement in your classroom this year to build up your robust classroom community!

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