The first six weeks at Prairie Creek are special. We develop routines and establish classroom norms. We learn how to navigate our schedule and we work to become leaders in the school. But I think the most essential work is getting to know and trust each other.
No learning can happen if students don't feel comfortable enough to try and fail in front of each other. Learning involves risk. One has to be willing to say, "I'm not sure..." and "Maybe..." and "I thought it was this...but it's not." If kids don't know and at some level like each other, they will not learn.
In the Herons, I do so much intentional work to develop a trusting community. It starts, I suppose, with our class name. I use it all of the time in the first weeks. "Herons, come over here and see what ______ found!" "What do you think, Herons?" and my favorite, "Oh, that's just the Herons being Herons." I tell stories about Herons of the past.
We also establish a sense of place. We explore the classroom and the students share their favorite nooks and crannies with each other. We spent a part of our first forest school sprucing up the Heron's outdoor encampment (which we've been using since the very first year of forest school.) I try to build the feeling that they are a part of a tradition and that the class identity is now part of their identity.
We also play a lot. This year, the Herons have gotten really in to shelling acorns. I've encouraged them to create systems, keep track of how much they're shelling, share their shelling strategies with each other. I get pretend angry when they are so in to hammering shells that they have trouble stopping when we move on to something new (sometimes they try to sneakily hammer a few shells! Good luck with that.) Making acorn flour is not, sadly, on the MCAs but having a shared memory and a shared goal helps to bring the class together so they are familiar with each other as we embark on other group work. At every meeting, we play a game. It's usually only 3-4 minutes of our day but we laugh together and, inevitably, someone says something that becomes a catch phrase -- part of our shared language. We also have a ton of games and crafts for after lunch. This year, kids are braiding yarn, playing chess, doing cat's cradle, exploring a lot of the math puzzles we have, playing "Oh Snap!" and Mastermind and building with some interlinking blocks. These activities start to build a shared culture in which we've had a lot of the same experiences.
Students also learn about each other through interviews and summer shares. They survey each other to learn their preferences in everything from colors to reptiles to car makes. At every meeting, students offer "short shares," little moments in their lives that others can ask them about at lunch. I use a lot of different groupings in our lessons so students get to know a lot of different kids in a lot of different contexts. We look for commonalities and explore differences.
The work of connecting continues after these first weeks, but it's most intense right now. If we all have a silly moment or two or three in which we learn to trust each other and laugh along, then we'll be able to take a deep breath and smile when our first try at a math problem isn't successful or we cannot for the life of us say "onomatopoeia". These are small moments but they add up so that, hopefully, when your child thinks of "Herons being Herons" they think of a lot of awesome kids who don't know everything...but aren't afraid to figure it out.
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