The new school year is here – 4 weeks for some and just 5 days for others. As the educational leader of the building, what is the most important thing I can do to ensure that my building, especially my classrooms, are ready to engage every single student in learning?
Well, the first thing is definitely NOT to begin instructing lessons. Wait ?!!! What?!!! No Teaching?!!! Yes. NO TEACHING. Well, no teaching the instructional curriculum, that is. At least not yet.
The beginning of the school year is exciting for everyone. Teachers are back with renewed energy. Students are back, full of excitement about what the new year promises to bring. The phones are ringing non-stop in the main offices, making it a robust atmosphere of perpetual motion.
New faces, new relationships, new people, new goals, new everything. So why would some environments create and develop all of this newness, only to regress back to the end of the last school year within the first 4 weeks of the new school year? How do we NOT do that?
There are three IMMEDIATE NEEDS to be accomplished within the first three weeks of school PRIOR to providing any instructional curriculum to the learning community.
The Physical Needs
The Physical Needs of the learning environment sets the tone of the building just as it sets the tone for the classroom. This trickle up from the classroom IS the beginning of the overall building’s learning environment. It must be welcoming. It must promote the need to invite everyone into its space. It should be comforting, clean, culturally sensitive to its inhabitants, and responsive to the needs of its appeal.
The Physical Space should be “Eye Candy” and “Nose Candy.” In other words, it should look like you want to be in the space and should smell just as attractive as it looks. It should also sound like a fun place to be as well. The physical needs of the learning environment are vital to its members wanting to be there in the first place.
Who doesn’t want to be in a space that looks good, sounds good, and smells good? I’ll wait for your response.
The Social Needs
One of the most important needs for all humans is the need to belong. To fit socially in an environment where they spend lots of time on a regular basis is very important. Not only do you want to “fit”, you also want to “belong” in that space. Have you ever seen the image of the tiny slice of clementine wedge bursting with flavor stuffed in and between two rigid, bumpy, wedges of garlic cloves? It fits, but it does not belong.
Nobody should be made to feel this way in any learning environment. Not only will it stifle the relationships that must be built to create a thriving learning environment, but it will also remove all creative and contributing factors of the participant(s) to the group at large. And noticed I intentionally used the word “group.”
Being part of a group is very different from being part of a team. Even the connotations of the two words feel different. Who wants to feel like that all day, every day, in an environment where they are supposed to learn and teach? I’ll wait for your response.
The mutual exchange of intellectual subject content is a team sport. Adults learn just as much from children as children learn from adults. This is the relationship in the classroom. Let’s move on to the next need.
The Behavioral Needs
What is acceptable in one space may very well be unacceptable in another. So the behavioral needs of the learning environment must be defined, established, and demonstrated with authenticity and genuine care for the growth of the overall environment to thrive.
The expectations should also be practiced daily so they become routine and ultimately the norm. As the third prong in establishing the three needs for creating the foundation of a culture of learning, behavioral expectations initiate and are the linchpin of the culture for the climate. This is where it all begins.
The needs of each member in the learning community will be met, nurtured, and sustained as the school year progresses. The goal here is to maintain the positive energy that built the foundation in the beginning. If the foundation begins to drift away from its original intent, this is the time to revisit the three needs and their expectations that created the foundation in the first place. If this happens in every classroom, with every teacher, with keeping the needs of the students first, the reality of meeting everyone’s needs would be satisfied.
The combination of these needs is vital to the non-disruption of the learning environment. When these three needs are met, students simply remain in the classroom. Teachers do not make referrals to remove students from the classroom because the relationships that have developed with their students demand that communication is necessary to resolve misunderstandings.
