The Classroom Management Technique That Completely Changed My Classroom Culture

     No one wants to feel like their time is being wasted. As someone who has sat through 18 years of schooling and five more of professional development,  I know that I want to walk into any learning opportunity and know what I'm going to take away from it and why that learning matters. My students (and yours!) are no different. If they are going to be sitting in your class instead of playing Minecraft, there had better be a darn good reason for it.

     To begin meeting that need, we take a day in the first few weeks of school to collaboratively construct a class purpose. Doing so gives students the vision to see why what they are doing is important.


Directions for creating a yearlong class purpose:

• Hand each student a stack of Post-it notes.
• Explain that they will have three minutes to brainstorm the main things that they will be trying to learn in this class. Explain that these should be broad ideas, such as "learn how to speak well."
• Provide students with three minutes to brainstorm, writing one learning goal on each Post-it note
• Students will gallery walk around the room, marking on a sheet of paper or in a notebook learning goals that they see repeated or that seem particularly important.
• Have a class discussion. Choose three to five learning goals that seem to sum up the main ideas of your class.
• Clear away old Post-it notes.
• Small groups will now work together to compile a list of reasons why those learning goals are useful for citizens of the world.

Ø  Important note: Your students may get stuck on the idea of going to college or getting a job, because that is what they have heard all their lives. This is okay, but ask them to think about great people in history who used their words well, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Lead a class discussion, deciding as a class why it is important to achieve your learning goals.

You can use this formula to create your class purpose:

We are here in order to learn to Learning Goal 1, Learning Goal 2, and Learning Goal 3, so that Reason why a citizen must be successful at achieving learning goals.

This past year, my fantastic class came up with the following purpose:

For the first month of school, we chorally read this every day. Sometimes, I would ask who could recite a line or even the entire purpose without looking. It was something we internalized and shared as a group and it was wholly and completely ours. It was a reason we were here.

We didn't read our purpose every day all year, but I would bring it back out when we were doing something particularly difficult or meaningful or just when I felt like we were lagging. This purpose united us and gave us a reason for learning that carried us through the year. I sincerely hope that my students will always carry this purpose as a reminder that their words do have the power to the change the world.

Cheers,