Today marks my school’s fourth day of school. I’m starting to notice that students and teachers are starting to get used to routines again. Students are getting used to backpacks and teachers are getting back into doubling up on coffee in the morning. So much energy has been used in getting classrooms ready and activities planned for kids. Individual classrooms are in the midst of continuing to introduce and reinforce school and class expectations. Every year classrooms use different activities related to creating classroom expectations. Generally, individual classrooms take input from students and create a few different norms for a class.
I’ve used similar strategies over the past few years to help co-create expectations for my classroom. This year I decided to call an audible and try a different strategy. I tend to loop with many of the same students so they generally feel like the expectations carry over from year to year. This year I outlined four expectations that I feel like match the classroom. I actually borrowed a few of these (she has many more) from Jessica’s fantastic post.
- Lean into the struggle
- Own your education
- Own our culture
- Feed your passion
I believe all four of these expectations are important. While introducing these expectations I gave a number of examples of how they can be applied in the classroom setting. I then had the students get into groups and discuss what each statement means to them. We had a brief classroom discussion about the expectations and the community that we’re in the midst of building. Students were then asked to think of a hashtag that matched one of the expectations.
The hashtag is intended to have the students internalize that particular statement. Students signed their first name and then placed the tag underneath it. This is what it ended up looking like by the time we finished.
I’ve already referenced the expectations at least a few times a day since last Thursday. I’m looking forward to seeing how students internalize this moving forward.
Educational Aspirations 