Building Expectations

Why

This is a session I ran with a group of students when I felt that everyday reminders of our school expectations had become ineffective.

Our School Expectations are:

Do the right thing

Be in the right place at the right time

Be ready and focused

Respect self, others and resources

Aim

I planned this session so that these students were encouraged to reflect independently from their peers and perhaps identify behaviours that they were unaware that they exhibited. My aim was to encourage these individuals to see what I experience as a teacher, and what others in the class experience as students. I also wanted them to increase their awareness as a collective and become a positive influence on the group.

How

I set out 4 pieces of paper, each with an expectation as the title.

In the first section, students were to unpack the given expectation and explain what it looked like, or didn't look like.

In the second sessions, individuals first wrote a reflection on what they did towards this expectation and then what they saw their friends do.

I also asked a member of SLT to come and observe the session as a mediator.

The outcome looked like this

Outcome

What I observed...

What was quite interesting was that some students would say that they didn't think they exhibited bad behaviour yet they saw this in the others. As I rotated the papers round from one individual to the next, they were able to read these and would contest their friend's perspective. I was surprised at how honest many of them were.

One student did not engage at all well in this activity. He could not see why he had been included in this session. In my opinion, his behaviour in class was the most damaging to others' learning. I wonder if he was aware of this, and struggled facing the reality of this situation. In this case, I built goals with him and his hub coach and with his consent, filmed him during class. He would go back to hub, watch the videos and reflect on what he saw.

Impact

Our principle says that with some students, your impact is like a drop of water on a stone; on a day to day basis you might not see a difference, but over time it would make a dent.

I believe that this activity had an immediate impact on our class culture, but faded over time. It is quite confronting, but it necessary in bringing these things to the front. What I liked, was that it wasn't me who was putting my opinions on them, but was a self generated reflection. This is a more formal approach to the mini-chat where the learner is encouraged to identify their impact.

I would certainly implement it again, if faced with on-going behaviour based challenges in the class.

#Learningfocusedculture