Building a Community of Learners: Step One

In a world where children and teenagers feel as if they are under the constant scrutiny of peers and adults alike, we cannot expect them to take risks with their reading and writing without creating a safe place in which they can do so. Educators often take for granted, or worse yet disregard, the value of the social-emotional climate in their classrooms. However, establishing a true learning community where each member's voice feels valued from the beginning will only afford our learners opportunities to think more critically and thoroughly about their reading and writing.

As I've written so often before, writing is both a deeply personal task and one that is inherently based on social interaction. From the way I have set up my physical classroom to the way I've worked to establish my virtual classroom through pandemic learning through to the delivery of instruction in my classroom, every single element of who I am as an educator is predicated on the belief that if I teach the heart first the mind will follow. We begin our day with a song that aligns with our social emotional learning goals. The students shop for books from our classroom library based not solely on reading levels or abilities but also by interest. Students vote to select our chapter book read alouds. Once I establish procedures for turn and talks, partner work and collaborative writing students often are given the option to select their own partners. There is time, regardless of the demands of the curriculum to listen to our classmates share about their special triumph or celebration.

They are five and six year olds, but they have a voice. They have opinions and ideas that are important for all of us to hear. I know these sound like simple things, but you would be shocked by how many educators have fallen victim to the demands of curriculum that they forget we do not teach curriculum. We teach children. Within each best practice or theory I have studied, there lies the one simple truth that effective writing instruction understands and makes room for collaboration among and between peers and teacher. I want my writers to feel like I am one of them, going through the same process they are. I want them to watch me model a skill, strategy or behavior and know that they are in a safe place to emulate that!

It means I need to establish predictable routines and rules my learners can depend on. It means I need to provide clear expectations and a means for my learners to soar above those expectations. It means through our collaborations, whether they be peer to peer or peer to teacher, the language of communication must be explicitly taught. It means I have to guide their reading, writing, thinking and speaking not tell them what to read, write, think or say. And perhaps, most importantly, this means I have to make sure mistakes are celebrated and not reprimanded!