During my first year as a teacher, one of my core goals was to create a strong sense of community in our classroom. But reading students’ feedback at the end of that year, it became clear to me that there was a gap between my impression of our classroom community and how connected and cared for students actually felt. So while we were still able to establish a good rapport, I saw that I needed to shift practices in the classroom to incorporate more intentional community building.

Importantly, I needed systems and practices that would encourage ongoing student input and collaboration and help hold me accountable to my values and commitments as an educator – and, as a result, make our classroom community’s values and core beliefs much more than just something mentioned in the syllabus or gathering dust on the wall.

They have to be a part of everything we do. That’s why I want to share some of the systems I’ve been building on for the past decade – and that I continue to improve! – to support an engaged and affirming classroom community for every student.

Inviting students to share their values to open the year

I don’t believe it is a teacher’s job to determine a student’s values but rather to see and affirm the values they hold while also helping them encounter and engage with the different values of those around them. That process all starts with honing in on each student’s values, choosing our top shared values as a group and making these values visible for our whole classroom community.

During our opening classes, every student reflects on their own core values and whittles down the list to their top one (slides link here). After whittling down their personal list, every student then shares their top value and why it matters with their peers. That’s quite similar to culture-building exercises you might see in many classrooms. What’s unique to our version of this exercise is that all students take notes on one another’s top values and add those notes to the first page of their spiral binders. For the rest of the year, on that first page, they have a class roster of everyone’s name and something highly meaningful for each individual.

Here’s an example of what one looks like in a student’s spiral:

This also matters on the teacher end, too, as on my own classroom roster, I have every student’s top value affixed right next to their name – before any other “data” that might be compiled as the year moves forward.

Together, we use that full list of values as the basis for a conversation about our values as a classroom community. From the start, each student brings something that matters to them into the context of our class as a whole and helps to shape how we will move forward together. Once we create our list of shared values and core beliefs that will shape our classroom community, we make them visible in the space. In our room, our classroom core beliefs are posted at the front of the room and on each desk, like so:

How we make classroom values and core beliefs visible

We continue exploring our values for the next few weeks of the school year, discussing one value and aligned core belief each day until we make our way through the whole list our class compiled.  

For example, this year, one of our classroom community values is perspective, so we discussed the story of six blind men each confidently (and incorrectly) describing an elephant that none of them can actually see. Independently, they only had a partial perspective and needed to add their experiences together to accurately perceive the whole. By exploring this story and others for each of our shared values, students bring each value to life just a bit more and help shape a fuller shared understanding of what matters to us as a group. 

This creates a bridge into our classroom content. I have lost count of how many times the story of the elephant and the six blind men becomes an entry point into our discussion of a story or novel. For me, the consistent alignment with our values helps further the idea that what we are learning is purposeful.

Values as an entry-point to learning

Whenever possible, we try to use our classroom values as lenses into what we are learning. Oftentimes, this takes the form of norming before collaborative experiences, such as peer workshops and discussions:

In these norming activities, students both individually reflect on which value they want to “own” for the lesson, share their choices with those around them and then return at the end to reflect again on how they did in bringing their chosen value to life in the lesson.

In a way, this frames the entire learning experience with a values-driven mindset and helps students also practice an authentic form of accountability toward the way they contribute to our classroom community. (And, I’ll add, it pushes me as the teacher to adopt this same cycle of reflection for my own choices in designing and facilitating!)

Values as a lens for whole-class reflection, too

One other core part of bringing our classroom values and core beliefs to life is how we use them to reflect as a whole class on how our classroom community feels. Intermittently throughout the year, students take surveys in which they offer feedback on which values and core beliefs are showing up in the best way in our classroom – and also which ones we need to do better at collectively. 

Those results don’t just go in front of me as a teacher, either. They end up in front of our entire classroom:

As a teacher, I know sometimes it is hard to ask students to give feedback on something as personal as classroom culture. But I think it is also worth considering what message is sent when we don’t ask our students how they see our classroom community – and what agency and ownership we deny them by not bringing their voices into this foundational conversation. 

That’s why I try to keep asking, sharing and then listening.

Creating opportunities to celebrate their peers

Out of all the values-aligned systems in our classroom, though, there is one that gets me most excited to talk about: “Signing the Wall” –  a practice I have been doing since my third year of teaching.  

At the beginning of each year, I create a new “wall” that is made up of mostly-blank posters aligned with each of our classroom values. This year’s wall might be my favorite so far: an octopus with each of its eight tentacles aligned to a different classroom value. Take a look:

“Three-fifths of octopuses’ neurons are not in the brain but in the arms.”

Throughout the year, students are given a chance to nominate each other for how they are showing up in our classroom community and living out our values and core beliefs – usually via this form. 

Here are a couple of examples of peer nominations my students have written this year:

In an education world that so often limits affirmation to traditional academic marks and athletics, “Signing the Wall” makes celebration accessible for students whose contributions might otherwise go unnoticed. The shared understanding that we develop as a classroom community opens up this hugely expansive range of opportunities for students to contribute, affirm one another and access a sense of pride in how they uniquely bring our values to life.

Peer celebrations become opportunities to share with families, too

Furthermore, what began as a response to student feedback and a way to build our classroom community has also become a way to connect with families and affirm our wider school community, too. I remember one instance during a family-teacher conference, we were about to wrap up our conversation when the student looked at me and said, “Well, Mr. Luther, are you going to tell my mom about the wall?” Up to that moment, I hadn’t realized just how invested this student was in the two tentacles they had signed so far that year. But within three clicks, I was able to pull up my spreadsheet in Google Forms and share how they had been celebrated in the words of their peers. 

Quite honestly, this has become one of my most important tools in communicating with families. As much as I love to share my own observations and feedback, what is more powerful than being able to pull up the words of affirmation from a student’s classmates and read them back to the student in front of their family?

In those moments and so many others, I’m reminded that this is what a system looks like: It’s not about any individual moment but rather about being intentional and holistic in bringing values and core beliefs to life.

A parting challenge to myself and other educators

I realize that, cumulatively, this feels like a lot, especially considering everything that continues to be put on teachers’ plates in the current moment. These systems have taken me nearly a decade to build and refine – and I’m still realizing each year new things I need to improve on in trying to be better with these systems.

However, I think the first step for any teacher looking to do this would be to start with three questions:

1. What values and core beliefs do you want to be true in your classroom community?
2. How will you share that with students while also bringing them into a conversation about what that looks like?
3. Is there a way for you to take those values and core beliefs and use them to celebrate students?

Also, I’m always happy to discuss more in-depth with teachers about what these systems look like, potential obstacles and challenges in implementing and maintaining them and even brainstorm how they could be adapted for your classroom! Teaching is community work after all, too, within our classroom walls and beyond them. 

More than anything, I know that we all want our classrooms to be spaces where students feel seen and affirmed, and in my own experience, the best way to make this happen is to be intentional and reflective in this vision.