In the upcoming days all of you will be working with your students to build your classroom Social Contracts. Remember that this document is “an agreed upon set of behaviors for how we will treat each other”, so you still need to have your classroom rules, procedures, and consequences. The social contract is the document that helps to create a self-managing community of learners, so that you as the teacher can focus on teaching as your students eventually learn to manage themselves and manage each other.
One key to remember as you are building the contracts for your class is to ask the students “what does it look like when we are ______”. This gives your students concrete examples about what behaviors connect directly to the words on the contract; even our secondary students need those concrete cues.
Remember to display the contracts in an accessible place in your room so that you can easily refer to them on a regular basis. However, don’t just use the contracts to redirect wrong behavior; commit to using them to AFFIRM the right behaviors!
Kudos to Neal kindergarten teacher Chelsea Coulson for having her classroom routines and procedures in place. As a first year teacher for the 2015-2016 school year, this was an area of focus for her. This year she’s rocking and we are so proud of how you’ve grown.