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Revisiting Hopes, Goals, and Classroom Rules

By Michele Cunningham

On a winter afternoon, a group of third graders has settled down for a class discussion. Their teacher, Nancy Kovacic, holds the book the children made last fall -- pictures and words embodying their social and academic aspirations for the year. "Who remembers," she asks, "way back to September when we wrote about our Hopes and Goals?" Eight hands shoot up.

"Stand if you remember your Hopes and Goals," she adds. The students hesitate. One child stands and then quickly sits back down. Seven brave the challenge. As they take turns recalling their Hopes and Goals, memories -- for some classmates rather vague -- begin to surface.

Nancy, a teacher at Coleytown Elementary School in Westport, Connecticut, is helping the children revisit their early efforts to build a safe, caring, and joyful learning community. It's an important midyear opportunity that helps the children see the progress they've made while setting the tone for productive learning during the remainder of the year. Here's how Nancy goes about this process.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION IN SEPTEMBER

Nancy and the students spent their first six weeks together intently building their classroom community. First, the children articulated their Hopes and Goals for their year's learning (or "Hopes and Dreams," as many who use the Responsive Classroom approach call them). They named things from learning multiplication to making new friends to learning to write script.

Next, each child created an illustration of her/his hope, with accompanying text, for a class book. Then the children helped create classroom rules -- which this class calls "Agreements" -- for how they would behave so that everyone could achieve their Hopes and Goals. Their Agreements were to "Treat others the way you want to be treated, Have faith in yourself and others, Try your best, Be responsible for what you say and do, Take care of our classroom materials and space." Finally, the children crafted a poster of their Agreements and hung it from the ceiling -- a daily reminder of how they want their classroom to be.

Nancy sees as top priorities the Hopes and Goals expressed by the students and the classroom rules those Hopes and Goals give rise to. Although Nancy recognizes the need to measure children's content and skill learning, she wants her students to be accountable for more than just their ability to complete objective tests. She finds that articulating Hopes and Goals at the start of school helps the children connect personally to the year's learning. And the Agreements the students help create are especially important: They remind children of the social and ethical behaviors that enable everyone to learn.

THE MIDYEAR REVISITING

From the start, Nancy has taught and helped the children practice the behaviors embodied in their Agreements. By midyear, though, she knows that memories may need jogging. It's been a busy four months. Holidays, snow days, early dismissals, mandated curriculum, and standardized testing are among the many things that have claimed class time and attention.

Still, Nancy makes time to keep social and ethical development at the forefront of classroom life. She believes that the learning experience is more joyful when teachers take time to teach and reinforce caring, cooperation, kindness, and self-control. Revisiting Hopes and Goals is one way to reaffirm those values.

As Nancy guides the children through their midyear revisiting, she follows the same order of teaching she used in September -- Hopes and Goals first, Agreements second. This reminds the children that their Agreements are there to help them achieve their learning goals.

Remembering Hopes and Goals. With Nancy's help and with their illustrated book to jog their memories, the children one by one remember their Hopes and Goals from early fall. Each child reads her/his entry in the book aloud.

Then Nancy guides the children in thinking about their progress in achieving their goals. "For us to think more about our Hopes and Goals," she says, "it might help to remember some things we've done this year to show our growth." More digging for memories. An animated discussion ensues about class activities. Nancy probes gently, asking, "What did this activity show about your learning?" or "What was the purpose of that?"

Making new friends was a big September concern. Several children note that Greetings and Activities during Morning Meetings have helped them learn about each other. Another child mentions that having free choice for indoor recess has helped him make new friends. Book clubs, says one child, have been a way to get to know others, work together, and improve reading. Other children note that hands-on activities and Academic Choice opportunities have helped them learn. Children cite their well-worn writing books as evidence of learning cursive, a popular hope when school started.

Keep, revise, or change? Nancy now helps the students think about their learning for the rest of the year. She asks for a student to help model how to go about this reflection. Jake volunteers.

"Jake, what was your hope last fall?" Nancy asks.
"Writing script and multiplication," Jake answers enthusiastically.
"Tell me what you've done to help yourself accomplish those goals."
Jake hesitates, thinking. "I've finished all the pages so far in my cursive book."
"Are there any letters you need to practice?"
More thinking. "Yes. N and S. I practice at home, too," Jake answers proudly.
"We haven't gotten to multiplication yet. Do you think you'll keep this goal?"
"Yes, 'cause I still want to learn multiplication and division."
"Sounds like you're ready to revise your goal."
"What's 'revise' mean?"
"Change it a bit from what it was. You can decide if you want to keep cursive. Maybe you want to add division."

The children go right to work. In fifteen minutes, Nancy rings a chime to signal for attention. The buzz in the room quiets. "Why is it important," Nancy asks, "for us to think about our Hopes and Goals?" She is ready to guide the children into a discussion of their classroom Agreements.

Linking learning to the Agreements. The children offer quick and telling responses to Nancy's question. "It's so you can try to get better," says one child. Another offers, "So that you know what you want to accomplish. You're not just fooling around with your friends." A third says, "So the teacher knows what to teach you."

Nancy can see exactly what's on the children's minds: They want to get better at their schoolwork, accomplish things without distractions, and have a teacher who honors their choices. "These ideas," says Nancy, make me think of the Agreements we made last fall so that each of us could work on achieving our goals for this year." She directs the class's attention to the hanging display. As the children read aloud "Treat others the way you want to be treated," Nancy asks, "Do you think that's happening in our classroom?"

"I've seen people stand up for others," one child reports.
"Can you give a specific example?" Nancy prompts.
"At lunch Eliza sits with people who might be alone."
Nancy probes further. "Do you think we still need to work on any of our Agreements?"
A student mentions taking care of classroom materials. "Sometimes," she says, "the markers get mixed up and you can't find the one you need."

As the discussion progresses, a student, quiet until now, raises a hand. She makes a comment about inclusion. "If people aren't letting us play or work on the computer or something like that, Mrs. Kovacic makes sure we get to join." She's clearly welcomed her teacher's intervention over the past months. Many students now agree they've felt excluded at one time or another. The discussion moves on to ways to consistently include everyone.

For Nancy, the discussion has confirmed that certain classroom practices -- hands-on activities, Academic Choice, reading partnerships -- do help the children learn. She sees that the children could do a better job with classroom materials. Plus, she's reminded of how important social safety is to her students. Without it, learning is more difficult. "Exclusion undercurrents seemed to be developing," Nancy notes. "I might not have noticed if we hadn't had our January discussion." Now she could plan to keep an attentive eye on this important issue.

Nancy closes with the simple statement, "I think we have a really good idea of what we hope to achieve for the rest of this year and how we can go about meeting our goals."

READYING STUDENTS FOR MORE LEARNING

In the hustle and bustle of classroom life, students may lose sight of their hopes and accomplishments. They may forget how their classroom rules enable everyone to learn. Taking time for a reflective discussion midyear gives them an important opportunity to refocus and practice. That helps ready everyone for a second half of the year filled with joyful learning.

In just a couple of minutes, the flow of students has reduced to a trickle and another bell sounds to start the day. The trek through the hallway was a calm, welcoming transition to a day of learning.

A NEED FOR CHANGE, A TEAM-CRAFTED SOLUTION

The hallways at Dame School used to look much different. Children would enter the building haphazardly and then talk loudly and run down the halls. This unruly and potentially unsafe transition from playground to classroom frustrated and worried the staff. "You could just feel the tension in this place, from the start of the day to the end," says first grade teacher Dawn Morris.

Staff members expressed their concern to the Dame Leadership Team, which consists of school administrators, teachers and support staff, parents, and members of the surrounding community. Together, the leadership team thought about proactive ways to smooth the morning transition from outside to inside. The goal was to achieve a pleasant atmosphere by helping children maintain self-control as they traveled through the long hallways.

The first step was teaching the children how safe, friendly hallway behavior looks, feels, and sounds. Teachers discussed the ideas with their students, modeled the hallway behavior they were looking for, and then let the children practice.

As the children were learning, so were all of the adults in the school community. From doing Morning Meeting in their classrooms, leadership team members were aware of the power of greetings to help children and adults establish a calm, respectful, and joyful basis for working together. They thought that greetings might have the same good effect in the hallways. Therefore, the leadership team decided to ask adults to be in the hallway greeting children as they entered the building in the morning.

LEARNING TO BE HALLWAY GREETERS

Hallway greeters were asked to look at the children as they entered the building, greet as many children as possible by name, and remind children who were off track about what walking through the hallway should look and sound like. "It's very different from hallway monitoring," explains principal Ed Barnwell, "because monitors watch, but don't engage, and they usually focus on punishment for misbehavior. We know you can't punish kids into learning social skills."

During the staff's first year of trying out their roles as hallway greeters, they needed to do a little adjusting. "We noticed that staff were clumping up in certain areas," remembers Ed. In response, the leadership team asked support staff to station themselves in certain areas and classroom teachers to be at their doors to greet and welcome children. Now, any available adult acts as a hallway greeter, and the practice is much less formal. It's just part of the routine at Dame School.

HAPPIER HALLWAYS

"Things are much slower and happier," says Pat Steiner, the Student Support Room program assistant, when describing how things have changed. The number of students running through the hallways has decreased, and the noise level has dropped considerably.

Another significant benefit of having hallway greeters is that this simple practice gives adults and children a chance to interact in an unstructured, non-instructional setting. Through their greetings, adults make it a point to convey excitement about the day, especially with children who may have struggled with self-control the day before. The cheerful adult greetings remind these children that this is a new day and encourage them to keep trying. "It lets the children know that we really care about them, want to get to know them, and are ready to help them do their best," says Linda.

"The real change," notes Ed, "is that now the kids are initiating greetings and conversations. Children ask adults how their evening was, or how they're feeling that day. It's really amazing to see small children taking an interest in adults' lives. And it speaks to the kind of community we're building at Dame."

This article first appeared in the Responsive Classroom Newsletter, November, 2005, published by Northeast Foundation for Children. Click here for a free subscription.

Copyright© 2006 Northeast Foundation for Children

Article by Michele Cunningham
Education World®
Copyright © 2006 Education World

03/17/2006