This fall, I’ll reach my 21-year mark as an educator. When back-to-school season arrives, as a veteran teacher, I usually feel good about my ability to connect with students in ways that will make them feel excited about tackling new challenges. But in the last couple of years, I’ve noticed the pandemic has really impacted how students respond to us teachers as we try to create a motivational classroom culture. I’ve heard this from my fellow educators, too: Our favorite relationship-builders and confidence-boosters just aren’t quite adding up to an empowering classroom culture. In the past, when one student shared a connection or took a risk with me, it motivated my whole class – but these days, it doesn’t always work that way.

For example, two years ago, I worked on math interventions with a student. She hated being behind in math, and she didn’t want to work with me – but we both loved basketball, so I made that our guiding light. I took our lessons to the playground and we worked with a basketball instead of on paper. I framed every math challenge in basketball terms – and that got her to shift her thinking and own her learning. By the end of year, we had a great relationship: She knew I was proud of her, and she was proud of herself. Then last fall, she was put in my class, and I thought, “Perfect. I’ll reconnect with her, the other students will see us connect and that will set the tone for building our classroom culture. Check!” Instead, when I greeted her, she looked around at her classmates, and I stood there thinking, “Oh. Not a check.”

That led me to rethink my usual back-to-school approach to building connections and classroom culture. After this experience trying to reconnect with a former student, I reflected on the tight bonds she and her classmates share and the trauma they’ve experienced at school. We educators have worked hard to promote stability since our doors reopened, but we couldn’t keep students from feeling the stress of social distancing, COVID testing and teacher and peer absences. I realized our students have responded to insecurity by creating their own secure bonds. Those bonds are their priority. Academically, this means they’re either going to be cheerleaders for each other, or sometimes, they may distract each other from growing.

As their teacher, I need to create a back-to-school structure that encourages my new students to make the better choice. That’s why I lean into the value of my students’ peer community to get them invested in the classroom community. I took a reliable strategy that I normally used to promote new relationships, and I used it to support and shape the relationships my students already had.

First, I set my students up to be good cheerleaders for each other. I start with our seating plan: We have tables in my classroom, and at first, I let students sit anywhere. After that, I assign students to teams and give each team a table. I tell them it’s random, since I don’t know them well yet, and that’s partly true. But I want to use their strong relationships to promote strong learning processes, so I use my observations to shape the teams: Who wanted to be a leader in our class discussions? Who wanted to contribute but got distracted by their peers? Who didn’t want to invest at all? I switch the groups up every few weeks to encourage the good work habits I see students forming and discourage any unproductive patterns I see them falling into.

Second, I give my students a way to use their tight peer connections to build tight team connections. I put accountable talk stems up around the room, we talk about how they could use those within our teams, and I give out group discussion activities that encourage them to practice. The topics can be anything – this is just a way to get students to start elevating each other’s voices and building up team spirit. I usually include turn-and-talk activities that get them saying “Hey, you go first, I’ll go second” and mini debates that get them saying “What I heard you say was this. Is that right?” Students don’t realize it, but that kind of talk isn’t so different from the ways they support and affirm each other on their own – so I talk about how much it matters to be the kind of team that has each others’ backs and supports each others’ voices, and that resonates.

Third, I incentivize my students to participate in creating team and class culture. I tell them we’re going to have a community points system, their teams are going to compete and they can earn points by working well together. I walk through the classroom while they’re working on group assignments and shout out the points they’re earning: like taking on the role of making sure everyone gets to speak or keeping the team focused on the learning goal. Sometimes, I’ll pretend like I’m not listening, and then I’ll spin around and praise what a group is doing and explain why they just earned a ton of points. I encourage everyone to clap for each other, so there’s a good balance of competition and community. The kids love the suspense, and even though they start out just trying to guess if I’m listening, they wind up getting invested in their groups – and in our classroom culture, too.

Fourth, I put my students in charge of leading our learning goals each day. After the first week or so, I tell students it’s their responsibility to start each day by getting focused as a team, checking learning targets and leading discussions. They get double points for every successful start to the day.

Our students have been through so much over the last few years. I’m truly proud of them for forming the supportive bonds they needed, and I never want to detract from that – but I do want to teach them how to use those bonds to empower each other to do great things. Last fall was my first time trying this approach, and my students became real cheerleaders for each other. I was proud to see how seriously they took the responsibility of modeling agency and accountability in our classroom.

And my student who I had trouble reconnecting with? On our last day, she wrote me a note, and the last line said, “Thank you for expecting me to be the best version of myself.” I’ll never forget what it felt like to read that. 

It can be daunting to walk into our classrooms this fall knowing that the process of promoting trust and motivation with our students will probably feel more complicated than it used to be. If you’re feeling unsure about facing that challenge, I get it. But I hope my experience will bring you some fresh inspiration for getting your students invested in empowering one another and themselves.