Cycle Two: Challenges and Opportunities in Building Classroom Communities

I consider schools a mini-society within the larger society in which we live.  There are individuals that group themselves (and sometimes find themselves being grouped by others) based off their roles within that mini-society and their backgrounds, abilities, skills, and interests.  This grouping is a natural process and provides an individual with an identity.  The goal of a teacher is to work with students from different groups and build a cohesive unit – a community – with the intent of learning with and learning from others.  This can be challenging to create, but rewarding to experience.

Students naturally place themselves into groups within the mini-society of school.  These groups can sometimes create barriers that prevent the growth of a community in the classroom.  Erin Gruwell, a high school English teacher in Long Beach, California, faced this issue with her students who came from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.  She was able to forge a bond among students by forcing them to realize the individual commonalities that tied the students’ lives together.  Erin Gruwell’s students pursued a common academic learning goal that could only be attained with the support of every individual in the class.  Her efforts led to an environment of social support that furthered the community within that classroom and her story (known as FreedomWriters) demonstrates how important a bond is among members in a community.  Erin Gruwell’s story is important to learn from.  Respect is the foundation to building a bond in a community.  I spend a lot of time discussing respect with my students – what it means, what it looks like, what it doesn’t look like – and demand respect in my classroom.

For success to be achieved in a community of learners, students need to feel comfortable in the learning environment to work with others and take chances (because students may fail, but they should know they have the support of their classmates to try again).  Johnson credits this social support as one advantage of using cooperative groups in the classroom.  I tend to use informal cooperative learning groups frequently in my classroom.  Sometimes these informal groups follow a “think, pair, share” format and other times these groups are used to promote reflection at the conclusion of a lecture.  After learning about base groups, I hope to be able to utilize this setting of cooperative learning groups in the future to further promote the bond of students in the classroom community.

Interestingly, students do not always choose their group status in the mini-society of schools.  Tracking – sorting students into groups to take certain kinds of classes – is an occurrence in many schools that categorizes students based on academic skills and abilities.  (Although Oakes questions whether a student’s race and socioeconomic status don’t play a role in tracking.)  Tracking is based on the assumption that “students learn better when grouped with other students who are considered to be academically similar” (Oakes, Ch 1).  Research actually shows that students generally don’t learn better in homogenous groups.

In my teaching career, I have had experiences teaching groups of gifted students, regular students, and low-ability students.  I hate to admit that I have planned different educational experiences for my gifted students than for my other students.  Tomlinson and McTighe argue that ALL students should experience meaningful curricula.  As I move forward in my career, I will pursue this goal, regardless of my student’s ability level, by providing meaningful educational experiences in the classroom to all of my students.  I can attain this by providing differentiated opportunity in the classroom.  To best differentiate, I need to know my students – their abilities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, learning styles…in essence, what makes them “tick.”  In the past, I have begun each academic term by having students fill out a personal learning inventory to get a snapshot of who they are as a student.  The best way I get to know my students on a personal level is through everyday conversations in which we build relationships that add to the classroom community.  Once I know my students, I can place them in cooperative learning groups to engage in course work that is (appropriately) challenging as Schemer suggests.

A perceived negative of differentiated instruction is the extra work required by teachers in designing tiered activities and lessons. I can personally attest to this.  One of my classes this school year has such a wide spectrum of student abilities that I was at a loss for the first month as to I could maintain academic rigor required of the course without setting students up for failure.  I began utilizing a universal design during planning stages in an attempt to help all learners in the classroom.  I often make modifications to assignments for my lower-ability level learners while providing extensions for my higher-level ability learners.  Although it is more work for me, each student is provided with an appropriately challenging learning task they can accomplish successfully.  I’ve discovered that success in the course leads to improved attitudes displayed by students and as a result the community of learners grows.  In my mind, the extra time and work on my end is well worth benefiting the classroom community as a whole.