Investing in Classroom Culture Transforms Education

In educating children, we do not invest enough in collaboratively designing a desirable learning culture in the first days of school. Because of this, students are expected to enthusiastically pursue their education with no ownership, little clarity, and therefore little commitment to behave as though they, too, are invested in classroom outcomes. This creates a culture debt that leads to behavioral issues, which educators then attempt to solve with increased classroom management. Culture debt causes learning debt by leaving less time for learning and developing positive relationships.

An agile educator invests in a culture of trust, visibility, empowerment, and collaboration in the first days of class. When classroom management is claimed and shared by each student, they hold each other accountable to their values and desired behaviors. Allowing students to self-organize helps them feel ownership of their classroom — rather than being told to comply to teacher-created classroom rules, the focus on classroom management fades and students begin self-mediating. Educators may then shift from classroom management to culture management. This is what happens when students co-design classroom culture. 

Investing in culture upfront may seem like it takes away from “the learning,” but in reality, it gives back to educators and students the enormous energy and time that was once consumed by classroom management, time that may now be reinvested into deepening learning and relationships, which returns that investment, with interest, week after week. 

A way we do this in an agile classroom is by co-creating learning agreements. When students and teachers design the learning alliance collaboratively and make it visible, they share and embody voice, choice, and clarity. Everyone owns the culture. Therefore, everyone upholds it. Here is an actionable tool you can use, called the Learning Agreement Canvas.

The Learning Agreement Canvas©

The six-step Learning Agreement Canvas© can be done for the whole class, each learning team, and even between individual students and the teacher.

1. Values: List shared values of the class/team. You will notice values are placed in the center, because this is the core, or heart, of the alliance. Aim for three to five shared values. 

2. Conflict: When humans work with one another, conflict is unavoidable. What separates a great culture from a bad one is not the absence of conflict, but how you engage in the conflict. 

3. Action: Without observable behavior, agreements are not very useful. In the action section, each value is translated into sets of actions statements, or observable behavior, for how the team will live out each value.

4. Feedback and Accountability: The toughest thing for students to do is to hold themselves and their peers accountable to their agreements. People and teams are not perfect. They will falter. These list the behaviors and structures for how students will remind and encourage one another to honor their agreements. Aim for two types of feedback and accountability:

1. Reinforcing (+) — Ask: When we witness the team holding to an agreement, how can we reinforce and appreciate the behavior so that it grows? How do we catch each other in the act of doing good?

2. Redirecting (-) — Ask: When we do not honor our agreements, how do we return to the agreement and support one another in honoring it? 

5. Signatures: When you are satisfied with the alliance, each team member signs their name to show their commitment and to give permission for others to help them to honor it.

Allow time for students to learn this new way of working together. When you see students not behaving in the way you desire, it can be natural to focus more on classroom management practices. Be careful. This paradoxically increases the poor behavior you do not want. By managing student behavior more, you reduce their ability to self-regulate and self-correct. Increasing classroom management and behavioral interventions, although sometimes needed, treats the symptoms and not the root cause. Do not let disruptive student behavior pressure you to place content before culture.

Co-creating a learning agreement is an easy first step to making your classroom more agile. Try it with the whole classroom or as you start student teams. You can download the template here and import it into your preferred application, such as Google Slides, Jamboard, Miro, or Mural, or replicate it on a poster board or flip chart for a fun in-person project.

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