Positive Behavior Expectations (PBEs)

Not me. Not again.

Anyone who responds with "I could never do that" when I tell them that I'm a teacher is probably imagining a similar scenario to the picture above. They are right to fear such a scenario. I'm sure many new teachers know the dreadful feeling all too well. And not only do we live it, many times we end up dreaming about it too!

But not me, not again. Never again will I idly stand by as my class falls into the boring dystopia of mismanagement. Establishing norms and creating a culture of collaboration and error are key initiatives that every teacher needs to leverage early on. What follows is my plan to establish norms and work towards a positive classroom culture using strategies from Victoria Lentfer's book "Keep CALM and Teach", Sharroky Hollie's "Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching" , and others like Doug Lemov's "Teach Like A Champion 2.0".

A Lesson from Summer Camp:

How & Why Do You Establish Norms?

Establishing positive classroom behaviors and expectations allows teachers to think through what they want their ideal classroom to look, sound, and feel like. What's even better is that teachers get to include students in this process and offer them some ownership in the learning environment that you are co-creating. I learned firsthand the power and joy of co-creating norms with your community when I worked at a summer camps as a teenager and young adult.

At the beginning of each session, campers and counselors within their respective cabins would come together and establish a set of norms, and then each cabin would share their norms with the whole the camp. The process would eventually highlight 3 to 5 reoccurring themes that synthesized what every group was saying; treat others how you wish to be treated/be your best self, don't make assumptions about people/build trust, and have fun.

A summer camp is a unique microcosm of social construction and natural wonder that doesn't always transfer to other areas of life. However, the creation of an intentional camp culture does share a lot of transferable lessons with creating an intentional classroom culture. In short, if you want your students to be their best selves, in or out of your classroom, you should plan to co-create behavioral norms with them that gives the guidance, choice, and accountability needed to be their best selves.

Nonnegotiable #1

Empathy, outrageous love, and a politics of care

Nonnegotiable #2

Culture of error and collaboration

Nonnegotiable #1 Learning with empathy and care

Talking about empathy is another thing that summer camp prepared me to do. On the first day or days of class, I plan to unpack empathy during our norm creation process. One way to do this is to have it written on the board before the students come into class.

Another way is to define empathy as it relates and differs to sympathy. How I usually frame that difference is by saying sympathy is when you say I'm sorry to someone who has lost something or someone, empathy is when you sit in silence or cry with that person.

Adding student friendly language to that definition can be incorporated by asking students something like: After seeing a definition of empathy, what is empathy to you? Can you give any examples? How is empathy different than sympathy?

The three to five PBEs we eventually agree on as a class will be rooted in group understanding and definition of empathy. I'm no psychologist, but I feel that stipulating a definition of empathy with our students helps everyone build respect and trust with each other. Our student's should trust that we love and care for them as people AND as learners.

As teachers, we have to plan and prepare for so many things. Luckily, loving our students is one thing we can do naturally and consistently. Showing our students "outrageous love" (as Sharroky Hollie puts it) is not a lot to ask from anyone. It is hard, though, and it takes a certain dedication that for me is rooted in care. Showing up prepared for our students is outrageous love and a politics of care.

Lastly, as we co-create the norms and think through the concept of empathy and care, what I hope to also be communicating to students is that their lives and ambitions outside of the classroom and outside the academic realm are valid and important aspects of themselves to bring to the table. Creating a safe space for students to practice empathy is a skill that can serve them for the rest of their lives. I want my students to know that their intersectional selves are truly seen and validated in my classroom. Their intersectional selves can be challenged, the way they view themselves can change, but it requires an ability to empathize with themselves. Empathize with yourself. I know that everyday my class is a work in progress, so when we all agree that empathy is just the minimum, than we can begin to do some truly inspirational work together.

Nonnegotiable #2 The liberation of failure

I make mistakes. Go ahead, quote me. I MAKE MISTAKES DAMNIT. And the sooner my students know that, the sooner they will make them as well. The stigma of failure in our culture, our American, New Mexican, capitalist hegemonic culture that is, typically frames failure as undesirable and often dangerous. On day one, I can let students know that is not the case.

In his book, Doug Lemov discusses a "culture of error" and creating a space where students can make mistakes. When I first read about a culture of error my mind immediately thought about how someone makes "mistakes" in a social studies class. There's the obvious examples like giving a wrong date or simply not recognizing or understandings words (especially words related to global geography and cultures), but there's also more abstract examples like people holding prejudices about others and speaking on them. We have to be ready to confront those moments as teachers of any subject, but social studies teachers are uniquely positioned to turn these mistakes into teachable, content-specific moments.

There are many ways I can plan and prepare to set up a culture of error. My first step would be to make a sign/anchor chart that outlines a Culture of Error and leaves space for students to add sticky notes. I urge you to take some time and reflect on at least one of the questions from the activity below, considering how it relates to everything we do in this world.

As a whole class activity, students will respond to the following three (or more if relevant) questions.

Are you afraid of failure? If so, why? If not, why?
In your words, what does success look like?
In you words, what does failure look like?
How can we make a classroom environment where people can make mistakes and fail?
Failure is important for my growth because...

When you consider the scope of mistakes in social studies, the idea of planning for error becomes inevitable. And just because the wheels of a culture of error are rolling, nothing ensures that they'll stay on unless you have a set of norms that echo the idea, place it into the students' language, and can be reference verbally or nonverbally at any point moving forward.

Norms, not rules

The following images are taken directly from Berit Gordon's book "The Joyful Teacher" and describe how I will plan to implement, reflect on, and co-create norms on the first days of schools. One way I will tweak this process for my own practice is to explicitly add the language of "empathy" and a "culture of error" to the norm creation process.

Reflection questions and example norms

How I plan to introduce my intersectional self with my students

In the teacher introduction page, I went over a few of the steps I will take to introduce myself to my students on the first days and weeks of schools. Letters home, quirky videos, and discussing personal interests are strategies I can do year round.

The process of co-creating norms goes hand-and-hand with my first unit of instruction entitled "Identity and Intersectionality". This unit can be used in basically all social studies classes, as well as some ELA ones. This unit gives me a chance to build on student's understandings of social constructs such as identity, and begin to express themselves and their multiple identities, cultures, and statuses in varied and creative ways.

The unit's primary summative assessment is an I Am From poem with the opportunity for students to give an authentic performance of their work. The unit will unpack identity and intersectional vocabulary that are crucial for deeper understandings of how the violence and struggles of our past inform and influence our present.

I am very upfront about my personal biases and research with my students because I view this honesty as one way to communicate to my students that I am committed to learn alongside them.

Are my norms effective?

How will I know?

Anyone can work to establish norms in a classroom early on. However, keeping those norms at the forefront of our students' hearts and minds is the real challenge that faces every would-be norm normalizer. I can admit that I only have my previous experiences in the classroom, and at summer camp, to inform my initial thought process around evaluating the norms we have set up. After reading about norms from a variety of texts, I have thought of a few strategies and tactics I can use to ensure that I am co-evaluating the norms we have set up as a class.

Strategy #1 Norm Check-Ins

Constantly do norm "check-ins" with students. This can be a more formal self-assessment sheet that asks student to rate themselves, and their classmates, on how well they feel the class is holding up the norms that they set. There can also be a space for them to offer additions or revisions to norms that are already created, which could be presented to the class and incorporated into the norms. This can also happen in a more informal process such as asking students to give a Fist to Five on how well they think the norms are being held up by the class.

Strategy #2 Co-revising norms

On top of doing frequent check-ins on the norms, another step to decipher the efficacy of norms can be making time (maybe once a month or every two weeks at the beginning of the year depending on class culture) to go over and revise the norms that have been set by the class. Again, this can manifest in formal and informal techniques. One thing I could do informally would be to have students anonymously rate how well they think the norms have been held up. Once we have scores (say 1-5) from the whole class, we can use the student answers to discuss which norms were not working well and then take time to revise or completely overhaul them.

Strategy #3 Live Polls on Norms

Live word clouds and poll response platforms are another great tool I can use to continually check the efficacy of the norms. This will give the students a chance to see how their peers think the norms are going and hopefully open up a discussion on the ways that students may not be upholding the norms, as well as the ways they are upholding them. This type of live feedback is super helpful for me as well because I can record and reflect on the answers to better plan my norm roll outs and check ins.

The 3 R's and 3 P's

Lastly, I wanted to add a quick reference to Hollie's point about the 3R's (Rapport, Relationship, Respect) and the 3P's (Positive, Proactive, Preventive). The following definitions are directly from chapter 3 of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching.

Rapport

Speaks to a special connection between the teacher and the student that leads to an understanding based on concern and care for one another. The condition that allows one teacher to be able to banter with students.

Relationship

Building relationships is another intangible but essential component to effective behavior management. Teachers who have built relationships with their students are trusted. Trust will liberate the teacher and the student to be what they need to be at any given moment. There are times when the teacher may not like what a student is doing but has the freedom to manage the behavior because of the trust that exists between them.

Respect

Mutual respect between the teacher and students has to be in place. The student has to have confidence that the teacher can teach. Over time, underserved students lose confidence in the ability of teachers to teach. For these students, the first criterion for respect is based on the teacher's ability to convey knowledge with understanding and sensitivity to the audience. Without a mutual respect and trust, it is impossible to build strong rapport and relationship with our students.

Positive

Hollie discusses the work of Geneva Gay when he outlines the 8 aspects of what it means to be a positive responsive teacher. It is "uncomplicated and intangible characteristics that are demonstrated consistently to students, such as care, empathy, sensitivity, kindness, calmness, humor, forgiveness, and patience."

Proactive

Being ahead of the curve. Setting up norms and always using the student friendly language of norms is one proactive measure already discussed in this section. Essentially, being proactive is planning and responding calmly to the knowns, the unknowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknows.

Preventive Procedures

Classroom management hinges of the effectiveness of classroom procedures and routines. Some preventive procedures would be plans to start class, how and when students complete work, where they turn work in, how the attention of the class is achieved, late work acceptance policies, using technology and so on. This is an area of classroom management that will be unpacked further in the next section "Routines and Protocols".

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