In this episode, I am going to be talking to you about four tips on how you can create a more engaged community in your classroom. 

Prefer to watch the video, click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiG6rF04B4k

Why is it important to create community ? We all know as teachers that relationship is the bedrock of behaviour management. 

One of the key factors to relationship is community or relationship between multiple people and how those relationships actually affect the way people behave with each other in the wider community. 

We live in communities. They are family, neighbourhood and church communities or sports club communities. All of these communities help to shape the way that everyone interacts with each other, the way we grow together, the way we value each other and the way we interact with the wider community. So, it is important that we develop those ideas of community inside a classroom so children know that this is an important part of doing life well as adults. 

Here are 4 tips to create a healthy classroom community.

1. Have a Constitution.

2. Create time to interact with your students.

3. Get to know your students outside the classroom.

4. Create Opportunities for Collaboration

1. Have a Constitution.

The first thing is this, have a constitution. What I mean by constitution is, spend some time with your class. When you are first getting to know them, talk about what is important to your classroom community. Identify the values of the non-negotiable aspects of the way that they are going to interact with each other and with you as a teacher. Now, this is a little bit different to classroom rules. They are things that you need to set in place based on your expectations as the teacher. Having a constitution is not like the constitution we have as a democratic society; it is a constitution that lists the values or the things that we hold as important and not negotiable in our society.

So in a classroom what you have got to talk to them about is, what are the values that are important and that we all share? If children have an input into the constitution values and they have an ability to speak into that, they will be more likely to own it and abide by it cooperatively. Take the time to develop a constitution or a set of values that your class agrees on.

2. Create time to interact with your students.

The second thing is this, create some time, every morning, to interact with your students. You could call it a morning meeting or a sharing circle or whatever you choose. Give the students time to actually express what is going on in their world. This is not necessarily about the lesson. It is not about what you need to teach.  This is time to give your class the ability to bond over their personal interests and over their personal fears, doubts, concerns or whatever they are going through. 

Give them an opportunity to engage. If there is something that they need to get off their chests, this is a safe space where they can talk about it, ask questions or share some exciting news. When you give children an opportunity to share what is going on in their world, what you will find is that they are able to focus more on the work that you want them to concentrate on. If they are consumed by whatever is going on in their lives and they have not had a chance to share it, they are going to be less focused and less engaged in the lesson that you are teaching. Get to know your students outside the classroom.

3. Get to know your students outside the classroom.

Thirdly, spend time as the teacher getting to know them outside of a lesson or outside of a classroom. Now I do not mean that you have to go and visit them at their home or have them over on the weekend. What I am talking about is, not allowing the classroom environment to be the only time you actually engage with them. Do things like sitting with your students for lunch while they are eating lunch in their designated eating area and eating your lunch with them. This will actually help them to see that you are a part of their community because you are sharing a meal with them. You may invite some of them to have lunch with you. You could have lunch with five groups of kids at a time over the course of several weeks. 

This gives them a chance to just chat with you and get to know you as a person. Look for ways to engage with them and talk to them in the playground when you are on yard duty, morning duty, crossing duty or bus duty. Take the time to meet them at the door before they come in so that you can chat with them about what is going on in their world and find out the stuff that is important to them as individuals and important to their generation.

Children have different interests to you and different interests to what you may have been interested in when you were their age, so take the time to get to know their world. Show them that you are interested and care about their world and then what will happen is, they will start caring about you and what you are passionate about as well.

4. Create Opportunities for Collaboration.

The fourth thing is this, you need to create opportunities for them to collaborate in the classroom. Do not always be about the individual lesson or individual work.  I am a big fan of individual work because behaviour management is easier when students complete tasks individually. It is easier to keep a classroom calm and quiet with individual work. However, I also recognize that it is really important that we give opportunities for our students to interact and engage with each other over their lessons and to dialogue with you, the teacher and the rest of the class. It’s important to encourage them to also collaborate with each other to problem solve when completing projects. 

Projects that require them to work together cooperatively, give them opportunities to learn teamwork,  how to value each other and how to support and help each other. Opportunities for collaboration are very powerful in building relationships and building community. 

So these are four ideas that will help you build community because the more cohesive the community is in your classroom, the more they will care about each member of the classroom and about you. A student that cares about the people they are with, will actually make an effort to behave and make great choices as well.

So, to recap:

• Create a constitution.
• Identify the things that are not negotiables for your class (the value system) and make sure everyone gets to contribute to that.
• Have a morning meeting or give an opportunity in the morning to let students get things off their chest, share something that is interesting to them and engage on that level.  
• You as a teacher, need to spend time getting to know them outside of the classroom. Have lunch with them, invite small groups to come and eat with you on designated days, talk to them in the playground or before school.
• Create moments of collaboration in class; do not always be looking for individual work or silent work. You have got to give them opportunities to problem-solve together, practice teamwork, practice engaging and supporting each other. 

As you do these things and the classroom becomes a more cohesive community, you will find that behaviour improves as well. 

So these are four tips for creating community in the classroom. I hope you found that really helpful. I would love to hear back from you. Tell me what is working for you or if you have got topics that you would like me to talk about. If you know somebody that would benefit from this content please share it.

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