Encouraging your students to become service-oriented is a powerful classroom management strategy.
Because it creates empathy.
It causes them to see their classmates as people just like them, with the same hopes, feelings, and struggles.
It virtually eliminates bullying and improves self-worth.
Most importantly, it opens their eyes to how disruptive behavior, particularly their own, affects those around them.
—Which very effectively improves that behavior.
Focusing on service also teaches life lessons, brings disparate students together in friendship, and improves cooperation and teamwork.
But the big question is how? How do you become a classroom that is altruistic and unselfish in nature?
What follows are three simple things you can do to encourage service beginning the first day of school.
1. Define what service is.
Before your students can begin looking outside of themselves in the service of others, they need to know what it is. To that end, I recommend teaching the following definition:
Service is an active form of helpfulness. Meaning, you don’t wait until someone asks.
It’s something you look for and act upon, even when it’s inconvenient.
Most often, it’s as simple as listening, smiling, or just being a friend.
You may also want to cover specific examples, such as how to welcome a new student or how to recognize if someone is struggling or feeling down—as well as how to approach them and what to say.
2. Model it with your behavior.
Your students are more influenced by what you do than what you say.
Therefore, your own acts of kindness and service—greeting students, smiling, asking how they are, looking them in the eye and listening, even reaching down and picking up a dropped pencil—can have a powerful effect.
These simple, humble gestures have a way of rubbing off on students, multiplying and bouncing from one to the next throughout your room like a happy game of telephone.
This helps ensure that no student feels left behind, lost in the cracks, or shoved into the margins of school culture—as so many do and are.
3. Go out and do it.
As I wrote in Dream Class, serving others outside of your classroom and into the wider school community has a calming effect.
It develops open-mindedness, maturity, and selflessness. It gets students out of their heads, turning their attention away from their own wants and desires and into a healthier direction.
And the amazing thing is, it’s instantaneous.
The moment you return to class from cleaning up the auditorium or raking the garden or helping out in a special education classroom, you’ll notice greater peace and contentment in your students.
At first, a small number may complain or feel uncomfortable, but the more you do it—even in small doses—the more agreeable they become and the more effective it is.
It Feels Good
One wonderful thing about this strategy is that you don’t have to work hard at it. I’ve found that service is something today’s students in particular are quick to latch onto.
It seems to come more naturally to this generation than those of the past.
As for finding the time for it, with good classroom management comes the freedom not to have to rush through anything. It buys you oceans of time few other teachers enjoy.
I’ve also found that even in this day of strict schedules and timetables, as long as you speak to your principal ahead of time, explain why you want to help out in a lower-grade classroom, for example, or beautify the joint-use park, they’re usually enthusiastically supportive.
So I encourage you.
Make your classroom more than just the acquisition of knowledge. Develop the whole person by being a classroom defined by service. It feels good. It has wonderful mental benefits for both the doer and the receiver.
And improves behavior while you’re at it.
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I think this is awesome and I plan to use it for the new term. I think I will begin working on a chart entitled: Service-Oriented Classroom.
This is very helpful as I am going to be a class teacher the next year.
This a fantastic suggestion. I agree, service generates self-growth and selflessness. I think it should be a common rather than special feature of classrooms. I, too, notice students are happier and calmer as a result. Thanks for this!
You’re welcome, Chris.
This past school year, I used service as a way for kids to make up for breaking classroom rules. I tied it into community service. It worked really well, and the physical activity involved in service helped dissipate energy for the behavior-challenged kids.
Thank you! Good tip!
Thanks!
This sounds amazing and I can’t wait to implement it in my lessons this September.
Thank you
I’m glad you think so, Taslimah.
Thanks for sharing.
I am a school principal and I have been thinking and talking to my staff about all of us making an intentional effort to be nicer to our students in the new academic year as a means of bringing out the best in them and in us as well.
Your strategy takes it a step further where students are encouraged to do the same. I can see this idea of selfless service on a school level helping to make our school community a happier, more cheerful place to teach and learn.
You’re welcome, Madona. I think it’s a great approach.
I so agree. I volunteer at a place that goes out on weekends to feed the homeless. Every third Friday my middle school classes make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for them to take to the homeless outreach. We turn on music, have assembly lines, and have so much fun. You get to know the kids so much sitting with them to help others. I say often, “Imagine, tomorrow some hungry person is going to eat your sandwich and be so thankful to you.” They love this! They also can’t wait until it’s third Friday.
I am in awe of you! Thank you for allowing your students to learn (in a practical way) the value of being a better human.
L
Thanks a million for sharing. It is incredible. I’ll try it without a doubt and I’m positive it can help to create a unique sense of community among students.
I think you’re right, Ghasemi. Thank you!
Thank you so much for this. I am part of a Management team at a new school (in Thailand) welcoming our 1st students in August this year. Helping to build a school’s values based program has encouraged me to look deeper into ways in which both my team, and students, can be better humans. Your articles are inspirational and will provide me with a constant source to refer to in the years to follow.
Thanks Lindy! Good to hear.
I’m glad you shared this, Michael, I’m a big believer in service outside the class as the other pedagogical lung of learning to the classroom time. When we also give, we can integrate into us what we receive. With only the lung of the classroom, I find that education becomes stressful, a bit forced or artificial. When there is the opportunity to also give beyond the classroom, I find learning becomes easier and more organic. It “breathes” easier. Thanks again.
Well put, Jerome. Thanks for sharing your insight.
My son’s kindergarten class put on a concert 4 separate times in the school year at a local retirement home. They talked a lot in classabout how they were spreading joy and practicing hard to show their ‘friends’ a special show. They stayed for a visit each time handing out cards, or small crafts. It had such a wonderful effect. The movie The Grinch took on a whole new meaning to my son who loved how Whoville came together and sang in Christmas and helped the Grinch’s heart grow!
Good day Sir
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