Circles for Community, Circles for Peace
(Leadership in My Classroom Series — #1)
My work as an educator is grounded in the value of community. This matters because students deserve to be part of a myriad of healthy communities. It is the responsibility of adults to expose students to healthy communities and to teach them how to nurture them as they grow together (and back together) through shared joys, pains, and conflicts. This year I will focus on intentionally creating community through classroom circles and writing project practices.
“Once a poem is written, it is filled with power and communicative force. When it is shared with others, the exercise becomes to listen to each other empathetically. In this way, we come to recognize others: their stories, dreams, and desires. And we also recognize ourselves: we realize we are not the only ones with a painful story. Rather, by sharing our voices in a group and listening to each other, we support each other give each other courage, hope.” — Draft June 2022, Principles of Writing for Peace, Juana Maria Echeverri, Rodrigo Ospina Rojas, and Kate Vieira, translated K. Vieira
There is great power in sharing our stories. There is greater power in writing our truth and then sharing that writing with an audience. Sharing our writing with others creates community. Community dissipates fear, distrust, and hostility. Community leads to peace. As Vieira asks, How can we teach writing so that we stop killing each other?
Several parts of this quote resonate with me: the words empathetically and listen and the phrase “we are not the only ones with a painful story.” My focus this year will be to intentionally create community in my classroom so that students cultivate empathy through the ability to listen and recognize pain as a shared human experience.
At the end of the last school year, I was approached by our school’s Restorative Justice (RJ) coach about piloting classroom circles. The pilot is simple: start the year in circle and continue to have classroom circles throughout the year. The RJ coach will then periodically survey the students about their sense of belonging at our school.
A few semesters ago, I had the opportunity to teach a Creative Writing elective. This elective allowed me to freely implement all of the writing project goodness that I have learned since 2016: writing response groups, author’s chairs, free writes, etc. I loved teaching this class. I loved the community that was created as a result of the routine sharing of writing. I loved the autonomy that the students held in regards to their learning. It was authentic teaching and authentic learning.
In contrast, for the past four years, I have taught sophomore English. This is my least favorite class. “Why is that?” I find myself asking this summer. Why can’t I make this course one that I love teaching in the same way that I loved teaching Creative Writing? The sophomore English course has many constraints. There are many “must dos” compared to the freedom of Creative Writing. But could I find a way to implement the writing project practices in this class? And if so, why not?
And so here my brain confounds with possibilities for my sophomore English class: circles to create community, writing response groups to encourage autonomy, author’s chair to provide audience, and free writing to cultivate routine writing practice. There’s an intersection of opportunities here, and I think all roads lead to community.
This year I want more discussion, more community, more listening, more empathy. I want the routine practice of sharing our stories to break down the walls that separate and divide us. I want to cultivate youth-adult partnerships so that students see themselves as leaders in my classroom while also growing as readers and writers from my academic leadership. I want to teach in a way that we stop killing each other. I want to teach healing; I want to teach peace.
