Chapter 1. Building a Healthy Classroom Community

Part 2. Tools and Strategies

Relationship-Building Activities

Strategies for Introducing Mindset

Part 1. How Do I Set the Tone?

Relationships: A Prerequisite for Learning

"Under construction!" This sign should be flashing above the head of every middle and high school student in our classrooms. As brain experts like Eric Jensen (2005) observe, the degree of change experienced by the adolescent brain is matched only by that of the infant brain. These changes affect many aspects of learning, the most fundamental of which is dealing with emotions. Teenagers struggle to discern their own emotions as well as those of others, which frustrates the two driving goals of adolescence: to fit in and to be known (Tomlinson & Doubet, 2006).

Adolescents often devote more time and energy to worrying about whether they are safe and accepted than to caring about whether they are learning (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2011). This may be why teacher-student relationships have such a powerful effect on student achievement (Hattie, 2012) and why community-centered classrooms are such an important contributor to academic growth (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).

The bottom line is that if teachers ignore the affective needs of teenagers, they will be less able to meet students' cognitive needs. Navigating the storm of adolescents' competing desires—for independence and acceptance, uniqueness and conformity—requires time and commitment, but it can produce gains in both socioemotional and intellectual growth.

For teachers who want to create successful differentiated classrooms, cultivating healthy teacher-student and student-student relationships is not a matter of convenience but a necessity. As outlined in the Introduction, to differentiate successfully, middle and high school teachers must

• Create an atmosphere in which students' unique qualities and needs are as important as the traits they share.
• Uncover students' learning needs through pre-assessments and formative assessment and tailor tasks accordingly.
• Plan experiences and tasks that are bound together by common and important learning goals.
• Present varied approaches and avenues for students to take in, process, and produce knowledge.
• Vary grouping configurations frequently and strategically as a way of granting access to learning goals, providing support and challenge, and building community.

Not one of these practices will be successful if students do not feel known, safe, and assured that the teacher has their best interests at heart.

If we ask students to take academic and social risks and to consistently operate outside their comfort zones, we must take deliberate steps to ensure that risk taking will be both supported and rewarded. Clearly establishing class rules and norms (with student input) is important, but it is only the beginning. As is the case with anything worthwhile, relationships take time to grow; they don't magically mature overnight. Teachers can cultivate connections with and among students through both covert and overt measures.

Developing Relationships Covertly and Overtly

The covert, or less visible, means of developing healthy relationships is, at its most basic level, simple adherence to the Golden Rule: it is the commitment to treat students as we would like to be treated, with respect and interest. Greeting students at the door, asking about their weekends, noticing a new haircut or an injury, and connecting students to one another ("Diana, did you know Savannah moved here last year, too?") are small gestures that can play a vital role in weaving the social fabric of the classroom, where relationships among students create the conditions for everyone to do his or her best work.

Covert methods can also be more systematic or strategic. Mr. Myles, a high school English teacher, recognized that the daily time crunch of his many classes could sometimes distract him from being as "human" as he wanted to be with his students, so he began including an extra blank at the top of every paper he collected. After students recorded their names and the date, they responded to a simple but powerful question: "How are you doing today?" As Mr. Myles collected his students' work, he was able to see what was going on in their worlds ("My soccer team is going to the playoffs!" or "My grandma's in the hospital. It doesn't look good."). In time, students started suggesting possible questions. Although they saw these questions as their teacher's way of making sure they wrote their names on their papers, Mr. Myles was subtly strengthening his arsenal for building bonds with and among students. His small proactive step paid off in a greatly increased sense of trust in his classroom.

The typical middle and high school schedule may tempt teachers to forgo more overt, or deliberate, relationship-building activities. But the press of time makes such activities even more important, as they yield dividends of increased trust and a better understanding of what it takes to motivate students and move them forward, which saves time in the long run. Whether used as a beginning-of-the-year survey or through periodic Exit Slips, questions such as those featured in Figure 1.1 can help teachers gather information for forming student groups according to shared characteristics, preferences, or interests that are relevant to a task. Individual student responses can also heighten teachers' awareness of student sensitivities, experiences, or attitudes that are useful for planning and responding to student needs in general. Even if students are at first hesitant to share certain information, allotting time to intentionally ask students about themselves is a starting point for building classroom community. Without making this investment, assigning and facilitating tasks (differentiated or not), grouping students, and managing the classroom may feel like an uphill battle.

Figure 1.1. Potential Student Survey Questions

Engaging in such fact-finding about students can help teachers create motivating lessons and manage their classrooms. High school English teachers Ms. Bakum and Mr. Uyeda were able to accomplish these goals through a survey they distributed in their team-taught English class (see Figure 1.2). The teachers used students' responses to (1) present lyrics from students' favorite songs as examples of figurative language; (2) make references to students' favorite shows when discussing character and conflict; (3) create class playlists to play during transitions between activities; (4) create flexible groups (such as "vacation groups" and "restaurant groups"); and (5) gather some preliminary information on students' conception of theme. Ms. Bakum and Mr. Uyeda went beyond using their survey as a late-August get-to-know-you exercise by leveraging the information to help them establish routines and reinforce important academic content.

Part 2 of this chapter outlines a number of additional strategies for building strong classroom relationships and uncovering who students are. Teachers need not complete all of these activities with every class. Rather, teachers should choose (or adapt or create) one or two strategies that suit their personality and teaching style and begin each semester overtly sending the message that each student matters, and that all students must work together for the class to be successful.

Figure 1.2. Student Survey

Source: Lindsay Bakum and Grayson Uyeda. Used with permission.

Mindset: A Necessary Foundation for Differentiation

Complicating the puzzle of teaching adolescents even further is the role mindset plays in students' motivation to learn. Carol Dweck's groundbreaking work (2006) has revealed that

1. Students' motivation to learn and achieve is strongly influenced by what they believe about the nature of intelligence.
2. Students who believe their intelligence is malleable (i.e., who have a growth mindset) tend to persevere in the face of hardship. Those who believe their intelligence is fixed (i.e., who have a fixed mindset) tend to be stymied by challenge (this is true whether students see themselves as high achievers or low achievers).
3. Teachers significantly, and often unconsciously, influence students' perceptions of their own intelligence‥

For academic interventions to have their desired effects on student performance, teachers must believe (and communicate the belief) that all students can grow. As is the case with building relationships, fostering the growth mindset in a differentiated classroom is a foundational imperative. None of the hallmarks of differentiated instruction outlined on page 10 will yield fruit without (1) the teacher's unwavering belief in and commitment to student growth and (2) students' belief in their own potential to improve with hard work. More specifically, teachers need to communicate the following truths:

• Mistakes and weaknesses are precursors to growth, not static portraits of ability.
• All students have room to grow, no matter where they begin.
• In a classroom of 30 students, there will be a great deal of variety in terms of where students are and what it will take to move each of them forward.
• It would not be "fair" or even realistic to treat everyone as the same person when this variety exists. The teacher's mission is to discover where each student is in his or her learning as well as what he or she will need to grow.
• "Fair" will not mean everyone getting the same thing; it will mean everyone getting what he or she needs to take his or her appropriate next step.
• "Fair" will mean that all students will receive learning tasks that cause them to "feel the burn" as they lift appropriately challenging academic weights.

In other words, learning is actually strength training. Every student should expect to receive learning tasks that will make him or her work just as hard and sweat just as much as his or her classmates. When everyone is experiencing exertion in learning, when everyone is making strides in developing personal academic strength and agility—that is when the classroom is truly "fair."

Addressing Mindset Covertly and Overtly

Clearly, this vision of fair is not the message communicated by the world, or even by school as a historical institution. Students are more likely to have been identified by their strengths and weaknesses than to have been expected to shed such labels as they progress in their learning. Adolescents, in particular, have had ample opportunity to develop the sense that fair simply means "the same."

To challenge students' thinking in this area, teachers must send both overt and covert messages about mindset. There are proactive steps teachers can take to help adolescents understand that what is genuinely fair is to hold the same expectations of growth for every student while varying the tools and paths used to help them achieve that growth.

Language is the most powerful tool in a teacher's arsenal for sending growth-mindset messages. Unfortunately, it is also the tool most frequently—and most unwittingly—used to undermine growth. This primarily occurs through the use and misuse of praise. In Carol Dweck's (2008) investigations into the link between praise and mindset, she determined that praise focused on students' intelligence could shut students down, whereas praise centered on their effort could push them forward. Dweck observes that when we consistently tell students they are "smart!" or regularly comment on their "brilliant work," we are communicating a fixed view of intelligence (either you have it or you don't). Such praise can serve as a coveted reward that some students will strive to protect. These students become less likely to take intellectual risks out of fear that their mistakes will detract from their perceived brilliance.

On the other hand, praise that focuses on students' effort or celebrates their learning process can significantly increase their willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. Ms. Ehlers, an 8th grade ELL teacher, makes a point to praise her students' willingness to persevere: "I like the way you tried several strategies on that problem until you finally solved it," and "I appreciate that you are experimenting with new vocabulary words in your writing; this word, in particular, paints a very clear picture in my mind." Dweck's research revealed that students who received this kind of praise were more likely to seek challenge and persist in the face of academic difficulties. For a teacher, changing the nature of praise is a subtle but powerful means of encouraging the growth mindset with adolescent learners, some of whom have already become praise junkies.

It is important to note that students of all backgrounds can come to school with a fixed mindset. Students who have a history of struggling in school may enter our classrooms with the notion that nothing they can do will override their "programmed" tendency to fail. They need to hear that they have a fighting chance and that their brains are like a muscle they can exercise and cause to grow (Jensen, 2005), no matter their academic history. If they don't believe this, they will shut down when a task gets difficult, attributing their failure to a perceived lack of intelligence rather than to a gap in their skills and the need for the right tasks and a lot of effort. Likewise, students with a history of gliding successfully though school without much effort might balk at tasks that actually challenge them.

Because of the reward-seeking nature of many students, it can be helpful to employ overt, deliberate strategies to promote a growth mindset and encourage students to take risks. Part 2 of this chapter outlines a number of such strategies. As is the case with the relationship-building strategies, teachers need not use all of them with every class; rather, it is important for teachers to share personal stories of struggle and perseverance and to choose (or adapt or create) one or two strategies that match their personality and teaching style. These strategies can help teachers establish the important belief that each student has room to grow, that each student can grow, and that the teacher will do whatever it takes to ensure that each student does grow, regardless of starting point or past experiences.

The Classroom as an Interdependent System

As we move into the tools and strategies for this chapter, it is important to note that simply implementing these techniques at the beginning of the year or semester is insufficient to build a strong classroom community. Teachers must continually cultivate relationships and foster the growth mindset in their curriculum and instruction. Just as many of the instructional techniques presented in forthcoming chapters will rely on the establishment of these bedrock factors, they will also reinforce and develop those factors. To proclaim the importance of community while ignoring it with our teaching is careless at best, hypocritical and destructive at worst. Building classroom community does require work up front, but its ultimate success relies on the caliber of curriculum and instruction we prepare for our students daily.

A Case in Point: Ms. Rissa

This school year, English teacher Ms. Rissa and her interdisciplinary team members have agreed to focus on fostering a growth mindset in the students they share. The teachers decided to use content-related examples to ensure that (1) their examples were distinct from one another and (2) their discussions enhanced their respective curricula.

Ms. Rissa decided to weave the discussion of mindset into the Life Soundtrack assignment she uses each year with her students (see pp. 22–23). For this assignment, each student created a four-song soundtrack to tell the story of his or her life, based on the four literary elements of character, setting, theme, and conflict. Not only was the assignment an engaging way to review the literary elements, but it also helped Ms. Rissa get to know a great deal about her students, who relished the opportunity to comb their music collections "for school."

Ms. Rissa realized that she could incorporate the discussion of mindset into students' choices for the "conflict" song: she would ask them to pick a song that summed up how they had faced a major conflict—versus self, others, nature, or society (i.e., one of the four literary types of conflict)—and how facing that conflict had shaped their character. She would have to change her own example to reflect that emphasis, as she always shared her own soundtrack with students to provide an exemplar as well as to present points of appropriate connection with them. Sometimes she and her students shared the same taste in music, but more often, it was a mutual experience, insight, or struggle that provided common ground.

To capitalize on the assignment even further, Ms. Rissa decided to have students share their soundtracks with their classmates as a way to foster student-student connections. By discussing how conflict leads to progress in their personal lives, they would also be laying a foundation on which they could build candid discussions about their writing later in the year.

Part 2. Tools and Strategies

Relationship-Building Activities

What They Are:

Proactive strategies for helping the teacher get to know students, for helping students get to know one another, and for establishing important affective norms in the classroom to facilitate differentiated instruction.

How They Work:

Teachers choose one or two of these activities to use at the beginning of the year to strategically discover the backgrounds and interests of students and to help them find areas of overlap with one another. Strategies can also be used throughout the school year to reignite a sense of connection and shared purpose.

What They're Good For:

• The primary purpose for using these strategies is to help the teacher get to know what makes students "tick" so that he or she can connect with students on a personal, "human" level and ensure they feel seen, known, and cared for.
• Teachers can also use the information gleaned from these activities to target student interests in instructional situations (e.g., interest-based tasks, word problems, writing prompts, student group work).
• By participating in these strategies, students will get to know one another as well. Building these student-student connections not only facilitates student grouping and regrouping but also promotes a trusting atmosphere in which students feel safe to take risks—a necessary underpinning of differentiation.

Tips:

• Although most strategies require a setup, Piecing Together Community (p. 24) is an exception to this principle, as it is an inductive strategy. Don't let students in on the point of this particular exercise until after it is completed.
• Aside from Attendance Questions, all strategies in this section require some debriefing with students following the experience. Do not just assume students got the point of the exercise. A combination of class discussion and individual reflection works best.
• The first five strategies work best when modeled by teachers, so share your own stories and interests first.

Strategies for Introducing Mindset

What They Are:

Proactive, concrete, student-involved strategies used to introduce the following ideas:

• Intelligence is malleable.
• Our mistakes serve as stepping-stones for success.
• Fair means everyone gets what he or she needs to grow, not that everyone gets the same thing.

How They Work:

Teachers choose one or two strategies to use at the beginning of the year to purposely introduce both the expectation and the value of effort. The teacher should debrief or discuss each strategy in terms of the three guiding ideas above. Strategies can also be used throughout the school year to reignite the expectation of hard work and risk taking.

What They're Good For:

• The primary purpose for using mindset-introduction strategies is to instill in students the expectation that they will experience challenge, as it is a necessary precursor to growth.
• Teachers can also use the information gleaned from these activities to reinforce the fact that students do have control over their learning. If students believe they can grow, they will.
• These strategies also present the teacher with the opportunity to redefine fair and to define differentiation. The more proactive we are about sending the message that difference is the norm, the less pushback we experience when different students are assigned different tasks.

Tips:

• Unlike the relationship-building activities, most strategies in this section do not require a setup, as they are inductive strategies. In other words, students should not be let in on the point of each exercise until after it is completed. The first two strategies are exceptions to this principle, as they take a more direct approach.
• All strategies in this section will require teachers to debrief with students following the experience to expose its purpose. Do not automatically assume that students got the point of the exercise. A combination of class discussion and individual reflection works best.
• Each strategy can be used in the context of the following before-or-after readings on mindset and the brain's plasticity:
  
  • —Mindset: http://mindsetonline.com. Carol Dweck's website, including information, videos, tests, tools, and links to other media.
  • —Brain Plasticity: What Is It?: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html. This site outlines the basics of neuroplasticity and the relationship between brain plasticity and learning.
  • —"Students' View of Intelligence Can Help Grades," by Michelle Trudeau (February 15, 2007): www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7406521. NPR radio broadcast, transcript, and article explore one of Dweck's studies examining the impact of mindset on grades and performance.
  • —"Unboxed: If You're Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow," by Janet Rae-Dupree (July 6, 2008): www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/business/06unbox.html?_r=0. New York Times article discusses the relationship between mindset and perseverance/resilience.