Sunshine & Rainbows
Tips on building relationships and community in a classroom
Community building and risk-taking are important values to instill in any students, particularly those in a language classroom.
When investigating what we can do to improve our practice, we so often tend to focus on the negatives: Why didn’t this work? Where did I fail? What did I do wrong? Well, this is the opposite. Focusing on positive aspects of my classroom provides a foundation to improve student communication, specifically in writing. So instead I will focus on the positives: What did work? What did I do right? How did I develop this sense of community that set the tone for success?
So let’s break it down…
1. Group work in “familias”
Student seats are arranged in groups, affectionately dubbed familias. This idea caught on when students would jokingly reference their familias or feel incomplete when a member of their group was absent. (It’s nice to have buy-in, isn’t it?) To establish this bond, I had students create and post family norms in the room and focus on group work and discovery learning. Furthermore, throughout the year I have competitions between different groups. For example: Who can identify the most unknown words using context from the reading? This year, I’m even planning to host a Spanish-class Olympics of sorts. We all work hard to establish community during the first weeks, but in my classroom, familias carry these values throughout the year to strengthen student bonds to Spanish class and their classmates.
2. Focus on sharing mistakes
When I check in with groups, I try not to ask the question “What did you understand?” rather “What mistakes are you making?” This communicates to students that they will fail. In fact, they are almost expected to fail, and that’s a good thing! They need to stop apologizing when they’ve said something incorrectly and start celebrating the revelations they make when fixing an error. That’s why I encourage them to discuss mistakes with their familias. This makes it okay to be vulnerable and increases the chance that they will step outside of their comfort zones — which is where we do our best learning.
3. Be yourself
When I share a lot of myself with my students, they feel like they know me and become comfortable sharing themselves with me. I tend to act foolish in my classroom: I make dumb jokes, do silly voices, share embarrassing stories about traveling or speaking Spanish (we language teachers are a special breed, aren’t we?). This causes students to laugh and connect with me and in turn, we create many inside jokes as a class that strengthen our bond. It brings me such joy to hear students say, “Remember when…” in reference to a moment we’ve shared in class. “Ms. Reckin, remember when you fell to the ground after just standing there?” I show my students that I’m human, I make mistakes and I can laugh at myself. And yes, we have a relationship where they know they can laugh at me too.
In conclusion, everyone gets along and every day in my classroom is sunshine and rainbows. Perfect, right?
…Well, no, this is not a Lifetime movie special. As an educator, I fully recognize that there is always room for growth. The success I’ve found from community-building, while something to celebrate, won’t stop here. I plan to use this solid foundation to improve my students’ writing. Building upon this community of learners, I will establish peer revising and conferencing routines which will promote growth in writing skills. Now I’m sure you can see where I’m headed: PEER EDITING! Come back to read my musings on editing techniques to foster Spanish writing skills.
