5 Tips for Building Collectivist Classroom Cultures
Taking a collectivist approach to classroom culture is ultimately more sustainable. At the heart of collectivism lies a shared responsibility for the health and wellness of the classroom and the individualism that occupy it. This is inherently more sustainable because it means the responsibility of sustaining learning is distributed equitably across a larger group of individuals, as opposed to centralized in the hands of one teacher.
It’s overwhelming for teachers to hold all of this responsibility. Plus, classroom culture is most authentically built and maintained when learners can see themselves and their voices within it. Therefore, the solution is to build collectivism cultures, and here are five tips for doing so.
Tip 1: Develop Classroom Agreements with Learners
Responsive Classroom recommends creating classroom agreements with learners. First, learners generate ideas for what classroom agreements can look like. Oftentimes, this results in learners creating a cumbersome number of agreements. While it’s unlikely that kids will remember each of these agreements, teachers can facilitate a synthesis of these little rules into broad, all-encompassing classroom agreements.
Oftentimes, when kids generate rules, they will identify what not to do. They’ll say things like, “Don’t run” or “Don’t be mean.” When this happens, I like to pose more specific questions to reframe, such as:
In the classroom, what should I hear students saying?
What should I see students doing?
What should I hear a teacher saying?
What should I see the teacher doing?
The latter two questions are especially powerful because it gives learners some voice into deciding what role the teacher should play in the classroom. For many students, this will be a first, sending a strong message that they have power to help sustain the classroom, too.
Tip 2: Play Team-building Games
If you want your students to operate as a team, you must teach them how. In my practice, this includes team building games. I usually start the year with a classroom crossword on the first day. When students enter first thing in the morning, they create their names with construction paper and dicut letters. Each child has as many squares in their name as there are letters.
Later on in the day, learners participate in their first team-building activity of the year, creating a classroom crossword puzzle. “Beause we want to have a classroom where everyone is included,” I say, “it’s important that everyone’s name makes it in.”
Remember, though, that it’s not enough to simply play these team-building games. While they’re supposed to be fun and engaging, it’s also important that you facilitate structured reflection on the team-building games.
Tip 3: Reflect, Reflect, Reflect
Reflection requires more than casually talking about how things went. Instead, kids need to articulate specific successes and challenges, using those reflections to set new intentions or action steps for the future. In fact, team-building offers an opportunity to model the type of reflection you want students to do in all parts of their learning. You might consider using something like the three questions below to help students reflect.
Today we succeeded by…
Today we were challenged by…
Next time, we will…
You can log their responses on a common anchor chart, or even have them journal independently about their experiences team-building.
Tip 4: Nurture Classroom Culture in Classroom Meetings
It’s not enough to simply build classroom agreements and explore teamwork in the start of the school year. For a collectivist classroom culture to be effective, it must be nurtured constantly. Class meetings serve as a great mechanism for maintaining classroom culture.
In Make Teaching Sustainable, I offer a few ideas for class meeting structures that allow for the consistent reflection on and maintenance of classroom culture.
Tip 5: Dismantle Academic Competition
A shift toward collectivism necessitates a shift in the way that we think about assessment and instruction. Too many assessment practices are grounded in competition and leveling, and this impacts the way we teach. Seemingly benign activities like races to get the correct answer or teams who have to get the most points can marginalize learners and generate anxiety around learning. Moreover, web-based, adaptive tools that level students create competition in the classroom, even if it might seem like levels are private.
Instead of using leveling systems, consider using criterion-referenced assessments that provide qualitative data. This qualitative data helps describe student strengths and challenges, as opposed to ranking and ordering students. Instead of posting classroom assessment data publicly, consider qualitative self-reflections, using structures similar to the team-building self-reflection. You can see a student sample of a reflection from Reclaiming Personalized Learning below.
You might even consider reflecting who you are calling on in the classroom. Oftentimes, teachers exhibit unconscious bias towards high-scoring students who tend to share “correct” answers. However, when we spotlight different answers and methods, even incorrect ones, we show that all students’ contributions make it possible for everyone to learn.
Collectivism is Sustainable
In collectivist classrooms, learners support one another. This is ultimately more sustainable because it equitably distributes the energy demands of learning throughout the classrooms. This not only means less work for teachers, it also means that learners are gaining independence and learning more. To make teaching sustainable, we must find practices that make teachers’ lives easier, meanwhile enriching the lives of our students by building learner agency.
A collectivist approach to building classroom culture does just that.
