Denise Waters Research - Shared Agreements in Action

Best for: Beginning a semester, resetting classroom culture, or helping students take greater ownership of the learning community.

Ask students to reflect individually:

Think about a group, team, class, or community where you felt that you mattered. What did people actually do that helped create that experience?

Encourage students to think about actions and behaviors, not just broad ideas such as respect, inclusion, or support.

Place students in small groups and invite them to share what they are comfortable sharing.

Ask groups to identify the behaviors and conditions they heard across their examples. These might include:

Have each group identify three conditions or behaviors they believe are especially important for a learning community.

Bring the class together and look for themes across groups.

Then shift from describing community to creating it:

What can we do—not just the instructor—to help create these conditions here?

As a class, identify a small number of concrete actions students and the instructor can practice.

Capture the ideas somewhere visible so the class can return to them later.

Optional follow-up:
Use the class's ideas to create or revisit shared classroom agreements.

Reflect:

What responsibility did students identify for themselves in creating the classroom community? What responsibility belongs to me?

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