Building The Community of Learners: Nurturing the Community

A classroom is not merely a room in a school. It should be a safe space where staff, students, and community can collaborate, come to understand, support new learning and work together to navigate challenges that arise. “Through meaningful and respectful relationships, people can talk openly, develop shared visions, and make decisions together. This goes hand-in-hand with the partnership that must be created in order to develop trust, respect, and practice reciprocity. The engagement of all partners, which includes: students, family, Elders, community, school staff, educators, and Indigenous governments, is essential for the development of the capable person” (ILEH, pg 17). As a community learns and grows together, the ability to overcome challenges in a respectful and safe way helps the relationships with the self and others grow and deepen.  “[Our schools] aim to cultivate healthy, culturally safe environments that nurture student gifts through the development of physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual self” (ILEH, pg 30).

“Indigenous communities come together to celebrate strength in good times and support one another in times of struggle”.The goal is for you to foster an environment that mirrors these values of Indigenous communities. 

Action Items: 

  1. There will be a staff meeting in the 1st week of October to share the Community of Learners work.  The school Admin will discuss Safe and Caring school information and each teacher will share their classroom values and beliefs statements and information on roles and expectations. 
  2. To celebrate the Community of Learners’ work throughout the school over the month of September, the school will host a school based feast at which classroom communities will unite to celebrate their work in building relationships together over a meal.  (This should take place in the week before Thanksgiving). Each teacher, staff member should contribute to the feast –  ideally with their classes.

Big Idea: Nurturing and attending to relationships helps all members of the community work to become capable people and form a strong supportive community.

Essential Question: 
How do we grow and support the relationships in the classroom to support capable people and a capable classroom community?

Culminating Task: 

  • Plan and execute “Go Backs” to the classroom belief statement AND the Collective strengths of your classroom community. Update and add any new strengths, gifts and talents that have surfaced. 
  • Create an anchor chart for use in your classroom that includes the oracy strategies that you use regularly and that students can draw from to share their thinking and knowings

Connections to Key Competencies:
Intentionally plan connection and team building activities that promote the ongoing development of the key competencies of the capable person

  • Nurture who I am and who I want to be: Students learn to adapt to people and places and share gifts, act on rights and fulfill responsibilities. 
  • Construct ways of being and living well together: Students learn to encourage and support people to belong, assume leadership when needed and trust others in their roles, as well as reconcile histories of the ways in which schools were organized and how that needs to be different today. 
  • Negotiate change and challenge: Understand power and respond, build resilience and envision and work towards sustainability

Connections to Capable Person:
How does learning in your class help students develop on their journey to become capable at school, in the community and in their understanding of the culture of themselves and their classmates? 

Oracy Development: 

  • Students will practice active listening and speaking in turn in circles and whole class discussions 
  • Students will speak on a variety of personal interest topics and engage in small group and whole group sharing 
  • Students will be able to use the oracy strategies that they have learned and practiced for a variety of purposes. 

Gauging Prior Knowledge and Honoring Student Voice:
The following activities are suggestions only, that may assist you with completing the culminating task. However, Oracy development is a must so attending to the goals for this phase of the Community of Learners is necessary. As a Classroom Teacher, you may choose which activities to complete, which to remove, and where more activities need to be completed. The culminating task(s) is/are mandatory to complete.

Possible Pathways:

  • Teachers review and consistently are using the many resources shared to support developing oracy and community (Team building, check ins, and circles)
  • Establishment and practice routines of checking in with students each morning and afternoon to welcome everyone back into the learning space
  • Community team building activities that encompass cooperation, resiliency and laughter.  
  • Integrate healthy relationships curriculum resources and supports used during literacy and health classes as opportunities to strengthen the elements of your classroom community. 
  • Create a visual display in your classroom to promote and record examples of activities and learning that contribute to becoming capable in ALL THE WAYS and the work done in the Community of Learners.  

Teacher Reflection:

  1. How do you feel about the way your classroom is working? Does it feel like a community? Are relationships being fostered and developed between you and students, You and SAs, SAs and students, and students and each other? 
  2. Who can help you when and if you are struggling with classroom behaviour and student apathy and disengagement? (Parents, community, Elders, reviewing the COL components, your Admin).  How can they help you?

Resources and Activity: Nurturing the Community

Nurturing the classroom community is an essential part of ensuring all members of the community feel connected, heard and valued. It needs to be done with intentionality and include components that strengthen both individual and collective strengths.

“When children are treated with respect, acceptance, enjoyment, and as contributing individuals, they will be strong and confident. They will be able to think and work things out; be able to deal appropriately with others; will be independent; able to plan ahead; have an understanding of consequences of their actions; and have a solid personal identity.” (INQ, pg. 15)

Components Supporting a Nurturing Community

Daily Check-In Activities (Circles)

Daily check-in activities allow space for members to connect, communicate and feel engaged. It provides a safe platform for celebration, conversation and conflict resolution. Checking in daily with the community is necessary to create a brave space to learn.

Oracy Strategies

“Traditionally, Inuit did not have a written language. All of Inuit history, knowledge, values, and beliefs were passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth.” (INQ, Pg. 19)

Oracy is the ability to communicate ideas, ask questions for understanding, and engage with others; it allows students to become active participants in their learning. It boosts learning outcomes, increases retention and helps students to organize their thoughts and reflect on their understanding.

Team Building Activities

Team building activities give an opportunity for community members to; build social skills, improve self-confidence, reduce conflict and learn key cooperation skills while having fun. Skills gained from team building can easily be transferred to all elements of learning and bring laughter to a community.

Healthy Relationship Programming and Curriculum

Healthy Relationship Programming teaches content that provides students with social emotional skills necessary to thrive in a community. It also opens dialogue and conversation around the importance of equity, diversity and inclusion.

In BDDEC the following programs are utilized to meet Health curriculum outcomes:

  • WITS/LEADS Programming
  • The Fourth R- Strategies for Healthy Youth Relationships
  • Healthy Relationships Plus Program
  • Healthy Relationships Program for 2SLGBTQIA+ (Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay,
  • Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual +) Youth
  • WiseGuyz

Self-Regulation Skills and programming

Self-regulation is the ability to respond to the daily demands and stress we experience with emotions and actions that are developmentally appropriate to the situation.
Developing self regulation skills and having the ability to co-regulate someone who is struggling to self-regulate strengthens a community's response to stressful situations and increases resiliency.

Multiple resources are available in BDDEC to support self-regulation:

Mind-Up Curriculum
Self-Regulation Classroom

 

Beliefs Based Classroom Management Strategies Resource

Keeping Classroom Communities Strong: 

Sometimes, we struggle– but in a community we don’t struggle alone.  We have others to help us, to guide us, and to share their strengths to problem solve when things get tough. 

It’s important to help students build the communication skills to work through challenges in the classroom and think about how their behavior makes it challenging for others.  This can help build collaborative problem solving in the community and help foster resilience. 

As a teacher supporting Classroom Communities that are safe and inclusive spaces, it is important to help students find their voice in times when they are challenged by behavior of self or others AND seek to understand their needs in order to help them and others get back on track.  This is oracy in action.  Using the oracy scaffolds and thinking routines in the first 4 components of the Community of Learners,  students should be able to access thinking and share perspectives with others and you as their teacher.  Oracy skills and thinking routines are foundational skills and should be embedded across subject areas. These skills are very important to help students identify sources of struggle and collaborate to “fix” them along with advocating for the needs of the community.   

   

Role of the teacher: 

  • Try to work with students on their behavior challenges separately and not in front of a whole group in order to help understand the need behind the behavior
  • Bring in the class belief statement to help redirect behavior and reacquaint the student(s) to what they value as a class. 
  • Bring in the Roles and Responsibilities Work that has been done to clarify whether everyone is able to do their “job” to keep the community strong. 
  • Coach and model using redirections and “fix it” strategies to help get back on track 
  • Hold class meetings and targeted circles to help students learn to help each other get back on track
  • SIVA statement (inclusive statement):   

 

This is the “We Do and You Do” phase of the Community of Learners.  With strong skills in problem solving, collaborating, and communicating students are now at a phase of readiness to navigate challenging curricular knowledge and inquiries that help them connect knowledge to place, assess community need, and engage in deep, meaningful and relevant learning. 

https://www.nesacenter.org/uploaded/conferences/SEC/2012/spkr_handouts/Hargrave_Restitution.pdf 

Activities

Activity 1: The Belief Statement “Go Back” (Should be done quarterly)

Thinking:

  • Values and beliefs may change over time depending on what is happening for a community.
  • Making adjustments to values and beliefs is an adaptive process that helps you be responsive to the students you have and what is happening in your classroom community
  • Students need guidance to check in with the belief statement that was made in September and need some reflective questions to help them think about the needs and beliefs of their community now

Activity: Checking in with the belief statement:

  • Ask your SAs, PST, Instructional coach etc to join your class
  • As a whole group form a semi circle near the posted classroom belief statement. Read the statement to the class and ask them to think about it.
  • Ask students to get into groups of 2 or 3 and talk for 2-3 mins about the belief statement. Ask them:
    • Think of an example for each part of this belief statement that has happened in the classroom this year
    • Is there anything that we always do that we don’t need in this statement anymore?
    • Is there something that we need to add to this statement?

Form a group with the SA, PST, Instructional coach and participate in the same way as the students 

  • One student from the small group will be asked to give 1 idea to the whole group for the question:  “Is there anything that we always do that we don’t need in this statement anymore?”
  • One different student from the small group will be asked to give 1 idea to the whole group for the question: “Is there anything that we always do that we don’t need in this statement anymore?”
  • Record the ideas from the group on the board or on chart paper
  • Have the whole group look at the list for each question and decide as a group what changes to make to the classroom belief statement. (When this is done the current belief statement will be taken down and the adjustments made. The new updated statement should be placed on the wall)

Activity 2: The Collective Strengths “Go Back” (Should be done quarterly)

Thinking:

  • As learning happens students develop and discover new strengths, gifts and talents.
  • It is important to continue to learn about the learners in a classroom community and celebrate new strengths, gifts and talents.
  • Reflective questions will help learners think about their strengths and continue to think about ways their strengths can help the classroom community thrive


Activity: Checking in with the classroom community’s strengths:

  • Ask your SAs, principals to join your class while you revisit the work done on collective strengths in your classroom community
  • As a whole group form a semi circle near the posted classroom belief statement with the strengths featured around it and the “What can our community do?” chart
  • Ask students to reflect on their own strengths first:
    • Have them share 1 strength, gift or talent from core curriculum activities, team building etc.
    • Next, have them share 1 strength, gift, or talent that they have been able to grow and nurture either: on the land, in language, in cultural activities, at home etc.
  • Make sure to record new strengths to add to your inventory.

Extension:
When you update the strengths, gifts, and talents section of your belief statement, have students work collaboratively to sort the strengths of their classroom community

Example:

Skills and strengths that help our community in: MATH, ELA, SCIENCE, SOCIALS, GYM, HEALTH etc

Skills and strengths that help our community: on the land, grow stronger in our cultural knowledge, and language

Skills and strengths that help our community: work together, self regulate, have fun,

 

 

 

Next: Update the “What can our community do” anchor chart to reflect the learning through Sept and Oct.

Sample Activity that supports Growth Mindsets in a Community of Learners

As part of the Nurturing Community, land connection should be consistently sought from October on. . .   
Ideas for Consistent Practice of Land and Community Connection:

  • Go for regular walks with your students outside (Use things like this sample of the Walking Curriculum, Math walks, or content driven prompts as provocations for your walk) 
  • Think of a way that you and your students can show land stewardship consistently as a class. 
  • Practice Sit Spots consistently.
  • Make land connection a consistent process throughout the seasons 
  • Use your School’s Cultural Calendar consistently to help plan land based activities that relate to the seasonal experiences happening in your community. 
  • Make time monthly to meet with your SA, your ILI, and/ or your admin to help you connect an authentic land experience with a community member or Elder for your class to participate in.
  • Generate a list of Land activities that are manageable with the time and resources you have access to that you and your class can do
  • Ideas:  (Remember some of these require a safety monitor and should involve your SA, a community knowledge keeper or an Elder to share traditional Knowledge)
    • Investigate animal tracks
    • Look for habitats
    • Harvest medicinal plants or snow or ice for tea
    • Look for different trees, types of wood, tundra plants 
    • Notice seasonal changes
    • Snaring
    • Making fires (creating heat outdoors) 
  • Think about your land connection time as an equitable structure to help ALL students.  It is a UDL structure in education in BDDEC. Whenever and wherever you can take learning outside and connect with students with the land, with community in the process and make knowledge experiential– you should! 
  • Keeping the community strong means nurturing the learning spirits and authentic connections of its members.  Land Connection practice is an essential element of this. 

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