About Building Community in the Classroom

I thoroughly agree with Ellen Booth’s article that highlights the importance of creating a warm and welcoming environment for students from the start. I believe teachers always try to set up some kind of frame of reference or ground rules, when classes begin, and I also think that students do the same. Perhaps the learners’ process is not as conscious as that of the teachers, but I have the idea that the first weeks of class are a kind of dance in which one partner is represented by the teacher, and the other by the students. Each partner makes a move, trying to get in the lead.

As teachers we try to create a class atmosphere and dynamics that we interpret as conducive to learning. A powerful reason to make a great effort to establish the dynamics you as a teacher favor from beginning on, is because students learn as much from what you do as from what you don’t do. So, in the face of a void, they will quickly fill it with their own patterns. These usually have to do with their home environment, mixed previous school experiences since students tend to recreate in the ways they interact that which they are most familiar with. When both systems (what you want and what they want) coincide, it is heaven; but when they differ or even oppose each other, the result is a power struggle that the school and the teacher not always win.

We tend to think that the “dance” I mentioned above happens only at the beginning of the school year, but in reality, the dance lasts all year long, with moments of more or less intensity. So, we have to be awake the entire year, or risk finding ourselves reacting to what the students unconsciously do, putting out fires and exhausting our energies.

Small classes, experienced, caring teachers, and clear rules go a long way to prevent disasters. Making students feel as proprietors of their learning process also helps (it reduces possible feelings of rebelliousness). Every year, there are several new students, but most students go on from previous years; reaching out to those who can be positive role models, or moderators of other more extreme student behavior, may help build bridges to the environment you want to recreate.