In educational parlance, building community means to manufacture it.
It means to organize activities and “circles” in order to create camaraderie and a cohesive family-like environment.
The sentiment is good.
A sense of togetherness and altruism is something every teacher should strive for. However, trying to build community, rather than allowing it to happen organically, is a mistake.
Here’s why:
It’s fake.
You can’t force community. You can only set up conditions that nurture it. Otherwise, students will resist. They’ll experience cognitive dissonance. It’s human nature.
Yes, they’ll go along.
They’ll tell you what you want to hear or do what is required. But inside it won’t mean anything real. Just another hoop to jump through so they can get on with their day.
It’s meaningless.
Tell a student they must say or write something nice about someone and they’ll do it, but if it’s not from the heart and of their own volition, then it’s hot air.
And everyone knows it, especially the recipient—who now feels embarrassed that the teacher made others be their friend or voice an unsolicited compliment.
Which is no compliment at all.
It’s dishonest.
If it isn’t real, then it’s a lie. Plan and simple. Kind letters, shout-outs, stuffed animal toss, morning meetings, and anything else force fed to students will never resonate.
The activity may be fun at first because of its novelty.
But soon it will ring hollow, becoming something to endure with a roll of the eyes and hopefully without embarrassment.
It’s awkward.
Many students are uncomfortable being put on the spot. Others are uncomfortable being less than authentic.
It discourages rather than encourages socialization.
The truth is, although you may not get audible groans when you announce a non-academic, community activity, they’ll be groaning on the inside.
It’s time-consuming.
If you’re serious about learning, you don’t have time for frivolities, especially those that are ineffective. Trying to build community directly is a massive waste of time.
Only the teacher feels good about it.
It just another piece of educational flotsam teachers are encouraged to do that provide little if any benefit to students.
How to Really Build Community
There are three ways to build community that are real and sustaining.
1. Protect.
By far the most important and effective way to build community is to protect your students from bullying, name-calling, and disruption.
They must feel safe, first and foremost.
Only then will they open up and participate successfully in group and partner learning activities. Only then will they take social and academic chances and build friendships with many different kinds of people.
2. Ensure.
You must ensure peace and safety through expert classroom management. Every student must be held strictly and consistently accountable for behavior that breaks the bubble of protection.
Your students must see you as the leader and defender who will step up and step in to guarantee their right to learn and enjoy being part of your class.
Once they’re able to let their guard down and be themselves, selflessness and caring for neighbors happen naturally.
3. Compete.
Competition builds new friendships, camaraderie, and community quickly and far better than a thousand kind letters.
It doesn’t matter what it is. A recess soccer game against another classroom. A math war between one half of the class and the other. Vocabulary group competitions. Debate battles.
Nothing works as well or is more fun.
Empower & Equip
Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it right.
Public education is failing, and one reason is the time spent on activities that seem right and might make the teacher feel good, but in the end hurt students.
So much is wasted on fluff and nonsense that take away from the one thing that helps students and their future more than anything else: Academics.
If they can read, write, think, and communicate well—above the low-bar “grade-level” standard—their entire view of the world and what they’re capable of is transformed. Opportunity explodes. Their life reorients in a new direction.
Our job is to empower and equip.
It’s not to tell students how they should feel. It’s not to tell them what to think or which political issue of the day to support. It’s not to engage them in amateur group therapy.
Teach content well. Spend the precious time you have on learning. Be great at protecting their education through classroom management. Demand hard work. Raise standards above what anyone thinks is possible.
And let them soar on their own wings.
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Love this. Thanks.
This is truth. I’ve been struggling with my advisory class, folllowing curriculum based on this philosophy. The students hate it and so do I. They don’t like sharing personal information with strangers. I get it because I don’t either. Thank you for validating my gut teacher instinct and putting into words what I know intuitively.
Another fantastic article highlighting the realities of teaching and what students really need! Thank you.
Thank you, I sometimes feel bad that I haven’t jumped on this latest bandwagon to support community building. Circles, R.J., Morning Meeting, Team Building, blah blah blah… Just one more thing to take time away from instruction. We (teachers) are constantly being hounded about our lack of instructional time, yet we are constantly being pushed to include these time killers. Some may say this is instructional, perhaps for some students in need of social skills support and training but, for most students, it is a huge waste of time.
This doesn’t even take into account the cost of professional development (training) and the amount of time teachers lose attending the professional development to implement these activities. Of which we all know will be dropped as soon as the next big thing comes along.
I agree with a lot of this. Building a community can become forced and ineffective. However, do you think there is a place for explicitly showing the students how to behave in certain situations? This is different than forcing them to do it. You show them how to give and receive compliments, deliver criticism, say apologies, etc but let it occur naturally. In my experience, some students need to explicitly learn simple scripts for social norms such as these before they will perform them.
Agree with this 100% (and I’m on my RJ team!) Some kids come from homes where basic skills, empathy, communication, and civility are not taught or discussed. Negativity and emotional outbursts, anger, and resentment are the norm. My goal is to infuse positive affirmations/teach meaningful self-talk to kids in the hopes some of it might just stick!
I tend to agree. We live in a different world in which many times a screen, tik tok, Netflix is raising these kids. Social interactions and norms need to be modeled and sometimes explicitly taught. I wish I could say that when it comes up, I send kids like that to the school counselor for that, but they are overwhelmed with social emotional issues and mental health concerns at my school. I agree, though, that forced community builders are not effective. My school pulls that on our staff, too, and same reaction. We have loads of work to do and we already really value each other for the most part. Because our school sets very high standards for staff.
I agree (as I expect most teachers would) that protecting students’ safety and defending their right to learn are of utmost importance.
But I think there are different ways teachers could effectively promote a sense of belonging. This piece is written from the perspective that everyone hates writing shout-outs but likes playing competitive games. I don’t think either is universally true.
I used to hold morning meetings for my 8th graders using what I thought of as the “3 As”: agenda (for the day), announcements, activity. Usually the activity had an academic component: a quick math game or vocabulary game, picking a country for a geography game of 20 questions, or just a discussion of current events. But occasionally it might be something else, like a minute of mindfulness, or sharing compliments that I had collected anonymously from students beforehand.
This year, I dropped the activity part because our schedule changed and I wasn’t sure how to fit in a 15-minute morning meeting. I regret it, and plan to reinstitute the practice next year if not sooner.
Gloria, I agree with what you said. While teaching content is what we are hired to do, teaching students ‘how do we get along in this world” is a key component that helps to build a sense of belonging in your classroom. Competition is also part of American culture, but not other countries. As our classrooms are becoming increasingly diversified, we need to incorporate cooperation, as well.
100% agree! Just had another 6 hr inservice on morning mtg, etc. I give myself 1 more year:(
This advice is pure gold. I e done the morning circles and the compliment activities. I knew it was fake and so did the kids. We were not a “family”, and I stopped these things. Your post reinforces what I’ve thought for a long time: let’s teach these kids to read, write, do math and think! Then their world becomes accessible to them and opportunities open up. Quit the fluff!!
Great article! It really rings true in many ways.
I am a teacher. You mentioned that it makes the teacher’s feel good, but ask one how they feel about what is forced on us to teach. I don’t like the “build a community” the way you mentioned. I build a classroom family knowing there will be fighting, jealousy, etc. It’s not the teachers. Stop blaming us! It’s the ones at the top!
The blame game is really getting out of control! 20 years in- and this is the worst I have ever seen it. Also, what has happened to student accountability?
Uhhh… can you email this to my admin. I don’t want to get arrested by the equity police.
100% agree with this article. It highlights one of the most cynical and hypocritical trends that are imposed on us by those who are in charge.
Wow! This is great! I especially love that you wrote “demand hard work and raise standards above what anyone thinks is possible.” Love reading your articles. Thank you!
I feel for these students, both the system and so many parents/guardians are failing them. To your point about amateur group therapy, it seems in the schools I’ve worked they call it social emotional learning, and I recently subbed in a 1st grade class where they had a specific SEL lesson for at least 30 min every day of the week, to teach them values like optimism and forgiveness. It made me wonder, are teachers supposed to be psychologists too? I think important values are nurtured and developed organically when students are held to a high standard via classroom management, teachers are being stripped of their reason for being, which is to teach. Let teachers be teachers.
I am curious why you consider social-emotional skills inherently different than any of the many other skills that we teach our students, which we know we must teach and provide them many opportunities to practice before we expect mastery
Thank you for articulating what I’ve long felt but been afraid to express. For the past 5 years, my district has been launching one SEL initiative after another. We’ve had hours of professional development and countless emails with links to resources to implement morning meetings, community circles, buddy up activities, and more. In my 6 hour school day, my 2nd graders have 40 minutes of recess, 45 minutes for lunch, and a 30-minute specialist. That leaves me with barely 4 hours for instruction! I want to shout, “Just let me teach!”
Hi Michael, thanks for another great post. I know you also post great videos to Facebook — are you on YouTube at all? If not, have you thought about it? I’ve been wanting to share these videos with colleagues, but Facebook videos aren’t as easy to share. Just a thought.
Michael, an eye opening article. Absolutely agree with you that precious time could be spent on academics instead of trying to promote camaraderie amongst students.
This same flawed philosophy is reflected in staff meetings where teachers are forced into teams of awkwardness to prattle off their feelings about some ‘new’ innovation or worse still get to know each other in a sad form of speed dating. I don’t know why we would inflict this on our students.
I completely disagree with this. I do an activity every day the first two weeks of school. The activities involve teaching the kids that they are unique and only they can add whatever to the class. Other days we focus on how teamwork helps us, working together in a group…..
The students looove the activities and beg for more. By the time October rolls around (we start after Labor Day), they are a strong unit and work together to “surprise me” and start class before I walk in. They zoom together on their own time to study (since covid). And so much more.
Yes, they can form a community on their own but it takes much longer and by my being involved in creating it, I’m included in it. They love me and coming to school.
Would you be open to sharing your activities?
Majority of the feedback I’ve read just showed lack of real care for tomorrow’ people.
Equipping students with important life skills should be something we should love to do as teachers.
This is even true for us educators when attending training courses and you have to “break the ice” and work your facial muscles to keep the fake smile on your lips.
Isn’t success in life about more than academics. If schools don’t think about those wider social issues, who does, especially really for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds? You’re still advocating for community building despite the headline. You’re just saying make it authentic. Expeditionary Learning are great on this with ‘crew’ at the heart of their programme.
True community doesn’t need to be manufactured. It evolves by learning together in a safe, nurturing and intellectually challenging classroom. It comes from intrinsic motivation and inspired teaching.
I agree that these “team/community building” activities do not work. I disagree about competition.
I have found that students turn on each other quickly during a competition and that this tends to elevate anxiety in the classroom. I find that when I build SEL into my academic math curriculum, students respond. The most difficult part right now is that I don’t have the support to truly keep students safe in my classroom as there is no lasting corrective action (formerly called discipline) from administration.
This year, my school is starting a new style of behaviour management called “Positive Discipline”.
A big part of it are regular (3-5 times a week) “Classroom Meetings”. The four key elements of them are:
1. Compliments of each other.
2. Helping each other.
3. Problem solving.
4. Planning for events and activities.
I’m not optimistic about how this is going to go. I think Michael’s point about giving each other compliments being embarrassing is probably right. And also his idea about wasting valuable learning time. Three to five 10-15-minute meetings is about an hour a week.
Well. We shall see.
Thank you for bringing this up. I couldn’t agree more. MM are such a waste of time. I don’t do them anymore in my classroom.