How I establish the rules of my classroom

A teacher recently asked me if my students and I collaborate on the rules of my classroom at the beginning of the year.

Actually, the teacher used the word “norms” instead of rules, because norms is quite the buzzword these days. One of these words that filters into education for a while, only to be replaced at some point by the next big thing.

My students and I do not collaborate on the rules of the classroom. The notion of teachers and students collaborating on rules is a popular one. Some teachers spend days establishing the rules (or norms) of their classroom through a collaborative process with their students. Such a process reportedly produces a greater level of ownership and buy-in from students.

I don’t do this.

Unless students are allowed to establish rules such as “Homework is optional” and “Candy will be made available upon request,” the rules that these classes decide upon always look conspicuously like the rules in every other classroom in every school in America.

My system is simple:

I establish the rules of the classroom. Then I encourage students to find ways to dodge, circumvent, or alter these rules without getting caught and punished.

It’s much more fun this way.

My annual plea to the girls in my fifth grade class: Maintain your advantage over the boys. Rule the world.

On Friday, Hillary Clinton  pledged to work to get all the female Democratic candidates on the ballot elected in November.

“I can’t think of a better way to make the House work again than electing every woman on the ballot,” Clinton told the Democratic Women’s Leadership Forum. “There are ten women running for the Senate, six women running for governor and I wish I could vote for all of them.”

I’d like to take it one step further:

I would be willing to replace every male member of Congress with a female lawmaker.

With apologies to my own sex, I have often felt that our country would be better positioned for the future if it were run by women. 

Frankly, it’s shocking that women aren’t in charge already. As a fifth grade teacher, I bear witness to the striking differences between boys and girls at the ages of ten and eleven. It’s well known that girls mature faster than boys, and nowhere is this disparity more evident than in fifth grade.

Every year, I have girls in my class who could already be employed as effective office managers. A few could probably run small companies with the right advisors.

At the same time, I have boys in my class who can’t get food from their plate to their mouth without some disaster occurring in between. I have boys who would scrape sticks in dirt all day if given the chance.  

How these boys ever manage to span this intellectual chasm and in many cases overtake the girls is beyond me. I can only assume that somewhere in middle school or high school, girls turn on one another, stunting their sex’s overall progress, while boys continue to follow a more cooperative, live-and-let-live approach.

Whatever the cause, I gather the girls in my class every spring and implore them to band together and continue their dominance as they move forward to middle school. I tell them with all sincerity that the world would be a better place if it were run by women, and that it’s up to their generation to make this happen.

“Don’t be mean to one another,” I tell them. “Stick together. Support one another. And by all means, don’t fight over boys. We’re not worth it.”

My dream is to send a generation of girls forward who maintain their advantage of boys and eventually take over the world.

Perhaps I’m wrong.  Maybe the world wouldn’t be any better if it were run by women. But after more than two centuries of male domination in the halls of Congress and the boardrooms of corporate America, I’m willing to give the ladies a turn and see what they can do.

It couldn’t be any worse than what my sex has accomplished so far.

Advice for teachers about to embark on another school year: Stay out of the classroom

I am entering my sixteenth year of teaching this year. I have learned many things over the course of my career. One of them is this.

For all of you teachers who are spending hours in your classrooms in the weeks before school starts, aligning bulletin boards along the horizontal and vertical axis, color-coding your classroom libraries, affixing perfectly penned nametags to little desks, hanging elaborate mobiles from the rafters, and otherwise creating colorful, print-rich environments:

Slow down. Relax. Stop, even. Go home during these last few days of summer vacation. None of this is as important as you think it is.

A sloppy assembled bulletin board by a team of students is always better than an aesthetically designed bit of bulletin board art designed by a teacher.

A disheveled library organized and maintained by students is always better than one carefully curated by a teacher.

A slightly less print rich environment with fewer splashed of primary colors is not going to make or break your school year.

You will be a far better teacher if you spend the countless hours that you normally use getting your classroom ready by reading.

Read a book that will improve or inspire you as a professional.

Read a book that you can recommend to your students.

Read a book from the pile that has been sitting on your nightstand for months.

Be the reader that you expect your students to be.

Or write. We ask our students to write every day, but so few of us model writing for our students.

Write some poetry that you can share with your students. Write a personal narrative about the worst day of your summer vacation. Write a short story. Engage in the writing process in a way that you will expect your students to this year. The understanding that you gain as a writer will be invaluable.

Be the writer you expect your students to be.

Or simply spend your final few days of vacation relaxing. Recharging the batteries. Exercising. Enjoying time with your family. 

All of these things will make you a far more effective teacher than the stuff that you are carefully affixing to walls, ceilings, and desks in these final days.

Let go of your need for perfection. Let go of your ascetic eccentricities. Let go of the fear that students, parents, and you colleagues will judge you based upon the appearance of your classroom. In the end, your classroom will account for less than one percent of your students’ success. It will be the relationships that you form with your students that will determine your effectiveness as a teacher.

Use this precious time to prepare yourself for a year of teaching.

Don’t spend this time preparing your classroom. Prepare yourself.