Building a Commitment to Learning in Students
By working with students to develop an explicit set of action steps that everyone can take to ensure that they have a great school year together, teachers make it possible for the students in their classrooms to exert daily efforts toward a common goal. The result will be a team of students who can achieve more together than they would have ever accomplished on their own. Develop Classroom Commitments or Norms With Students
to groups, but instead, they are developed by groups. Norms, values, and collective commitments allow the members of a collaborative team to bring their voices to the table to communicate what they need from others for their learning to be enhanced. Hal Urban, a former high school social studies teacher at San Carlos and Woodside High Schools, used a similar process with his students (H. Urban, personal communication, October 17, 2005). Early in every school year, Hal and the colleagues on his collaborative team engaged their students in an opportunity to develop a set of collective commitments with one another. They started by explaining to students that the world we live in requires a greater understanding of— and appreciation for—people than ever before. Then, they asked students to think about the commitments that they would have to make if they were truly going to learn with and from each other over the course of the school year. Students worked in groups of four to answer the following questions together.
In the PLC at Work process, collaborative teams of teachers spend significant time developing norms, agreements on how they will behave to work effectively together. In fact, norms, values, and collective commitments are considered foundational elements of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016). They are not handed
1. If we are to have high levels of learning, what should the relationship between student and teacher be like in this classroom? 2. If we are to learn from each other, what should the relationship between student and student be like in this classroom?
(Student Name)
HAS HELPED OUR SCHOOL TO BUILD A BRIGHTER TOMORROW TOGETHER BY:
Figure 1.2: Brick for building a brighter tomorrow activity.
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Secondary teachers interested in leading students through a conversation about the meaning behind their school’s chant, motto, or slogan can find a blank template titled “Looking Closely at What Our School’s Chant, Motto, or Slogan Means” on page 21. Primary teachers who like Tim’s “Building a Brighter Tomorrow” idea spotlighted at the beginning of this chapter can find a brick template in figure 1.2 (see also the reproducible “Earning a Brick to Add to Our School’s Foundation” on page 23 to use with students).
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