CMC Central Presentation: Building Classroom Culture

Yesterday I presented at CMC Central and I told the lovely group of humans I would up load the presentation here.

Here’s the description I sent in:

BUILDING CLASSROOM CULTURE: SOCIAL CONTRACTS, CIRCLES, RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

It’s relationships that make our students want to perform. The quick end of class question. The deeper outside of class conversation. Research shows that students work harder for teachers that they perceive care about them and well all of us do our caring is not always evident to the students. This session gives educators a model for building positive classroom culture using a social contact, restorative justice, and circles.

First, participants will have the opportunity to build a social contract using the same process that is used with students in order to construct social norms that foster a productive learning environments.
Participants will then join in circles. Learning how to structure them including good questions to ask and how to assess the trust level in their classrooms. Mod- els will be shown on social development and curriculum circles.

The last portion will focus on restorative justice. Traditional discipline suspends relationships which leads to further behavioral problems and decreased learn- ing. It also disproportionally punishes students of color. Some simple restorative methods can lead to an outcome that repairs instead of suspends. Using restorative justice teachers will send students back to work and productive much faster than traditional discipline. We all know that students who are not in our classrooms can’t learn. Let’s get them back and learning as quickly as possible.

Here are my slides. 🙂

Let me know if you have questions. 🙂

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