mary van milligen

Turning off my educator brain enough this summer to install the required maintenance needed for the next year.  Sometimes, that malfunctions, and I saturate myself in my ongoing reflection journey.  Inspired by some recent conversations with some colleagues, I must express my perpetual need to relay the importance of building a community in a classroom.

Literal shared space happens with students every day, but it should also philosophically and metaphorically exist.  With teacher modeling of fostering connection, it’s ESSENTIAL to build a strong city of citizens that unite, network, accept, and authentically see one another.  

Naysayer: Well, I don’t have time to do that.  I have standards, skills, and an inflexible calendar.

Answer:  Doing this gives you more time.  Students assist one another and demonstrate continuous engagement when they know without any morsel of a doubt that their teacher cares, but more to the developing child/adolescent mind, their peers do.  Their efforts to receive attention in negative ways dissipate.  And if all goes well, the teacher witnesses a harmonious culture where students understand the expectations of each day and how each student is a part of it.  

Some more tips to create this:

1. Music–I’ve shared this before, and I’ll share it again.  Create a class playlist. Find their “walk up to the plate” or hype song.  For the #StrangerThings Fans, what’s the song that helps the student survive the Upside Down world?  Play these songs (clean versions of these) when they enter the room.
2. Display their work in the room often or in a digital format.
3. If they sit in pods, have them come up with fun names for their pods.
4. Check in-questions.
5. Do more ice-breaker games throughout the school year, not just the beginning of the school year.  Have students come up with their own.
6. Create a room where students can’t hide.  Provide superfluous opportunities and creative ways for students to share their voices.
7. Make the students know every person’s name in the room. Encourage them to say hello in the hallways, at extracurriculars, in their community, etc.
8. Require students to share inspirational quotes and let the student explain why  he/she/they found meaning in that particular quote.

(I’ve shared more ideas in a former blog on this website. To be honest, I have so many, it may be my next book.)

Remember, it’s not just about you, the educator, and your connections to your students.  That part is key, but wow, when you see students relate to one another from different ideologies and interests working together to build a powerful city of learning, you can’t help but think how important these skills will be when they transcend outside your classroom.  Wish I had a documentary to share with you to watch my 4th period Poetry class from this last semester do everything I’ve described and more.  By mid-semester, this class comfortably danced (this is not a metaphor, it was like the beginning of the Ellen DeGeneres show) into the room, and by the end, they showed me pictures of how they found their pod-mates at prom.  When the class’ last bell rang, one student stopped them to take a picture.  

He couldn’t leave without capturing the special society of supportive souls.  

And I couldn’t help feeling pride in that moment, the community of unity, the genuine smiles aimed at the Iphone in front of them, in witnessing a city of citizens and improved learners giving me hope for our future.