What can teachers do to set their students up for success in the classroom? In the book Cultures of Thinking in Action, educator and researcher Dr. Ron Ritchhart shares the idea that: ‘Students Learn Best When Known, Valued, and Respected by Both the Adults in the School and Their Peers’ as the fourth mindset needed to build a learning environment empowering students to set and achieve high expectations for their learning outcomes.
A discussion around this mindset must build on the themes of the book’s previous three mindsets. A detailed teacher discussion and review of each mindset explored in this book can be found in this online book club series.
Curiosity is Key to Building a Culture of Thinking
At the beginning of his discussion on Mindset 4, Dr. Ritchhart shares a quote about the important role curiosity plays in education from well-known educator and researcher Vivian Paley:
“The key is curiosity, and it is curiosity, not answers that we model. As we seek to learn more about a child, we demonstrate the act of observing, listening, questioning, and wondering. When we're curious about a child's words and our responses to those words, the child feels respected.”
This highlights an important tenant for educators to remember as we seek to engage our students: the way we are treated by others shapes in part how we see ourselves. Traditional education models focus more on what students are lacking when they enter the classroom than what they bring to it. In what researcher Paulo Freire called the “banking model,” students were “empty vessels” that teachers were charged with filling up, rather than active partners and participants in their own education.
This view of education is a barrier to student engagement and creativity in the classroom. If we don’t value what our students bring, how can we show them that we respect them as active members of the learning community we are building together? If teachers don’t value students’ experience, knowledge, and ability, how can we jumpstart their innate curiosity about the world around them?
As Vivian Paley highlights so eloquently, an important part of building a culture of thinking in the classroom is curiosity. Modeling curiosity for students starts with showing our own curiosity about them as individuals. When teachers are truly curious about our students and bring that curiosity into the classroom, we can uncover more about their experiences, knowledge, feelings, and the things that impact their success as our students. When teachers are curious, Paley says, we are showing students our respect – and teaching them how to show respect for others.
How curiosity went missing in our schools
Kids are innately curious. Think about the learning expectations of a toddler. They want to know what things are, how they work, and what comes next in the story – immediately! Where does that curiosity go from those early years of childhood to when students enter our classroom? One of the reasons why curiosity has gone missing from our schools is because of the impact of traditional teaching models like the banking model, that essentially train curiosity out of our students and dismiss it from our classrooms.
How does the banking model kill curiosity? By shutting it down. When a child has a question or observation, and they are corrected by their teacher who gives them the “right answer,” the teacher is implying that the student’s curiosity is invalid. In this classroom, the environment is implying that a students’ personal experience and creativity is not valuable to their learning experience within it.
The result of that process, which is intrinsic to many schools, is to disengage students from the learning process. When our students become passive listeners in the classroom, rather than active participants – we’re not giving them the opportunity to think creatively and build knowledge that is personal and relevant to them. Curiosity is a key driver to authentic learning – and by removing it from the equation, we’re doing our students a huge disservice.
Modeling curiosity that leads to deeper student learning
In contrast, when a teacher stops and genuinely listens to a student, considers their ideas and point-of-view, and asks follow-up questions – that teacher is showing the student respect. The student is learning that they can add value to the learning community and shape the interaction. They feel respected in their role as a student, and their peers see the teacher modeling open-mindedness and curiosity. To help reverse the effects of years of traditional teaching models and kick-start curiosity in our students, we must model for them what it looks and sounds like.
One way to model curiosity in a larger setting than one-on-one is through the Socratic process. Socratic dialogue plays a key role in the KnowAtom lesson process. Allowing students to take the lead during group discussions helps to give them agency over the learning process. Rather than a teacher defining who these students are as learners, they are building their own identities as questioners, as participants who share their thoughts and experiences, and as learners who change their mind when they hear the ideas of others
Modeling curiosity through the Socratic process leads to deeper student learning because it helps students build an identity as someone who others want to listen to and want to learn from. When students understand that they bring value to the group, they’re more invested in its outcomes and more apt to take intellectual risks and share their thinking. To spark curiosity in the classroom, we must first build a safe space for students to tinker with new ideas and reshape their own thinking.
When teachers truly value what their students bring to the classroom and show this in their words, actions, and in the learning opportunities we provide – we can build a learning community where students are empowered, feel safe thinking critically, ask tough questions, and share what they think. When we model curiosity and show our students how that leads to a deeper understanding of the world around them, we’re empowering students’ innate curiosity to propel their own learning and encourage the hard work it requires.
Modeling curiosity in response to student behaviors
One part of building a safe and welcoming learning community is modeling curiosity when that community feels threatened. For example, when the class is impacted by the words or actions of a student, teachers can model curiosity with their response to that transgression. Instead of “Stop that,” or “We don’t act like that here,” a teacher who is curious about their students shows an interest in why an action that might be out of character has occurred. We can’t stop treating our students as valuable learning partners in the classroom when something goes wrong.
Instead of assuming why a student acts in a certain way, to model curiosity the teacher can ask them, “Why do you think this happened,” or “What was going through your mind at that time?” When we take the time to learn more about how our students think, we may uncover things that are impacting their success in our classroom. When we model this type of curiosity for the group, our entire learning community can benefit. When teachers require their students to think deeper about their actions, those students are working to better understand their own behavior. Outside influences impact our students and if we can understand more about them, they can help us support their long-term success in our classroom.
Dr. Ritchhart writes, “We strive to move… toward a model that builds an inclusive community that respects what students bring with them. This is rooted in our understanding that we are naturally social beings who strive for connections, inclusion, recognition, and a sense of belonging. These qualities are what make us feel safe and allow us to be more adventurous in our learning, take risks and make mistakes."
Rather than creating impersonal spaces where we ask students to leave everything but their textbooks at the door – to build a culture of thinking in our classrooms, we must build a community where individuals are respected for what they bring and responsible for using that to improve the learning outcomes for everyone. Together, we can learn how words and actions affect the entire community and how we can all help support each other.
Teaching practices that promote learning from and with our students
Spending the time to build an authentic learning community should start at the beginning of the year and continue throughout it. Building a routine takes time in the beginning, but the benefits to learning outcomes of identifying and supporting students’ social emotional health are immeasurable. The process need not be cumbersome or overtake your learning objectives. Instead, there are short, daily routines that you can implement to provide students with an opportunity to share more about what’s important in their lives and that may be impacting their studies.
To begin, teachers should model sharing their own personal experiences to help students understand what is expected of them. Sharing more about what is important to us as individuals can help the class build a community of trust by identifying things we have in common. In addition, the information students share can help teachers be more responsive to their needs.
One idea shared in the book is a magnetic “mood board” where students rate how they are feeling every day when they enter the classroom. In this example, if students were feeling pretty good, class continued, but if most students were feeling less than great, the teacher took the time to stop and talk about that before starting the lesson. Just the action of taking the time to check in with students showed that their teacher cared about them. Similarly, a daily shout-out where students dedicate their learning to someone is a great way to engage them in self-reflection, self-motivation, and sharing. For this activity, students can pick anyone –somebody they read about in a book or saw on TV, an important person in their life, etc.
The KnowAtom lesson routine includes collaborative learning opportunities where students work together to lead their own science investigations. Building a culture of respect and openness early on is essential when students are required to work together. Community building exercises that help kids learn how to collaborate can be a fun way to start the year and help students build the skills they need to do so effectively both inside and outside the classroom.
The role of teacher and student within a learning community
One of the biggest changes from traditional to new teaching models is the different roles of teacher and student. When we move from a classroom culture that is transactional – with the teacher in the role of information giver and the student as information receiver – to a community where we are all playing an active and important role, teaching becomes more relational.
What does this mean? As we begin to model for our students how to build strong relationships with their teachers and peers – by asking authentic questions, honoring people’s experiences and ideas, and showing curiosity – the connections we make in our classrooms are stronger than ever. Dr. Ritchhart shared a study that showed, “...developing caring communities of learners had both short- and long-term positive effects on elementary school students' attitudes, motivation, positive behavior” (Battistich, Schaps, and Wilson 2004). In addition, “‘belonging uncertainty,’ most felt by underrepresented and marginalized groups, undermined motivation and achievement.”
To begin, ask yourself, “How can my teaching be designed to learn from and with my students?" Our words and actions really do stick with our students. When teachers model building strong professional relationships by showing our students that we care, we’re building the trust they need to show their own vulnerability, take the leap, and think creatively in our classroom. The foundation for that success is belief – the teacher’s belief that their students can be successful and the students’ belief that what their teacher is asking them to do is in their best interest.
When we’re asking students to build their own knowledge and think creatively rather than just parroting from a slide, video, or text – that’s a risk. It’s scary. It’s also scary to build relationships with our peers so that we can work together to solve hard problems. To give students the comfort they need to do this, we must build a culture that is safe – and that is based first on the relationships between students and their teacher. Dr. Ritchhart shares, “Feelings of relatedness and a sense of belonging are basic psychological needs,” (Deci 2000). “Furthermore, the interconnectedness of social, emotional, and academic development as central to the learning process has been well researched,” (Jones and Kahn 2017).
Improving thinking, learning, and social emotional development with a caring learning community
As teachers, we are already overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of the learning outcomes we are working towards each year. How can building a caring community of learners help us reach those goals? One way to think about it is that a sad brain, a mad brain, an upset brain, or a scared brain can't learn. When we build a safe space where we’re learning and sharing along with our students, we can better identify the challenges affecting them.
Students are social by nature. They’re already preoccupied with social concerns when they step into our classrooms. When we treat those outside influences as only distractions, we’re fighting a losing battle.
We’re also not setting our students up for success. Instead, when students work together to create something meaningful to them, we’re capitalizing on their social nature to kick-start their creativity. When students share what they’ve learned, their peers are naturally curious about what the students in their class have achieved and delighted to share in their success.
By building classroom routines that prepare students to work together effectively, present their findings clearly, and incorporate feedback from their peers – we can build a safe space where creativity and collaboration is encouraged. Instead of competing against one another, these students are learning how much more effective they can be when they work together. Just like good managers support the strengths and weaknesses of their team members, these students are learning how to work as a team, depend on one another’s strengths, and ask for help when they need it. They’re also learning how outside influences impact their feelings and actions in the classroom – as well as those of their peers – and how to work together to overcome those challenges together.
As teachers, we can approach our job as being the Chief Executive of the Caring Community of Learners. Our charge is to increase thinking and learning by making our classroom an environment that's hospitable to connectedness. Many students have “belonging uncertainty” that affects how they perform at school. This could come from being a newcomer or belonging to an underrepresented or marginalized group. It could come from not finding other kids with similar experiences to connect with. That experience is demotivating for students. It can make them feel like they need to hide who they are and what their experiences are, but teachers can do so much to help these students feel seen.
Moving from the role of rescuer to a warm demander in the classroom
While we are modeling building strong relationships with our students by listening, sharing, and caring – we must also set high expectations for their success. Research shows that “...the number of strong relationships reported by youth is positively related to academic motivation, socio-emotional skills, and responsibility, and inversely related with high risk behaviors” (Roehlkepartain et al. 2017). To motivate our students to achieve great things, we have to believe they can – you can’t fake it – and we have to convey that belief by setting high expectations for them in our classroom.
One way to think about this is by acting as a warm demander – someone who shows they care about their students and creates a safe environment for them to learn, while also challenging them to think deeper, ask tough questions, and work together to achieve their learning goals. In an earlier mindset we discussed that for classrooms to be cultures of thinking for students that schools need to be cultures of thinking for teachers, where one key element is asking questions of each other intended to cause hard and sometimes uncomfortable reflection - described as hard collegiality. While a principal may be the warm demander engaging their teaching team in hard collegiality, teachers model that role in classrooms. The all-to-often default alternative to that is acting as a rescuer – someone who comes in and helps by taking over or changing what's difficult when they see students are struggling. Why do teachers rescue? One reason may be the feeling like “time’s up” and we have to move on to the next thing. But instead of setting high expectations for our students, rescuing them tells them that we don’t think they can do it on their own and reinforces ‘why try?’.
Formative assessment, checkpoints, and setting high expectations
One way to help move away from rescuing students and towards acting as a warm demander is to implement formative assessment in the classroom, including checkpoints. This gives teachers and students more visibility into where students are and what they are thinking, which can help teachers clarify expectations and support building a relationship with the content and skills being learned. When we give students a chance to “check in” with their teacher and really challenge them to explain what they are thinking, we can help them identify and work through challenges on their own. Checkpoints can also help speed up student progress by giving them a chance to implement feedback during their work process. In contrast, a summative assessment (i.e., end of activity or unit test) doesn’t give students the feedback they need at the time they need to use it.
Another way to avoid the perceived need for a rescue is to ensure we’re giving students tasks that are learning focused not work focused. If we’re not setting them up for success with classroom routines, time requirements, material needs, activity design, etc. we’re creating an opportunity where their struggle is turning to frustration rather than a motivation for engaging. To help, checkpoints provide a chance for teachers to show that we see and appreciate students’ struggle and that we believe they can overcome those challenges while also acting as a warm demander. In contrast, when we set students up to do a specific task in a specific amount of time, and when they can’t meet that expectation we move on, we’re inferring that we care more about checking off the activity as complete than that our students achieved authentic learning outcomes from it.
Another key concept from this chapter is – The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. This might make you think first in terms of what behaviors you allow in the classroom, but we can also think of it in terms of the type of work we see occurring. Without checkpoints in place, we may be missing when students aren’t achieving their learning goals or allowing them to work towards a lower standard. Checkpoints help teachers identify whether their students are coming to their own understanding of the topic at hand, setting high personal expectations, and reaching them.
Transparency leads to perceived fairness
Research shows that, “Perceived fairness activates the reward center of the brain and makes us happier with the outcome, even in situations where we personally might benefit less,” (Tabibnia, Satpute, and Lieberman 2008). In addition, writes Dr. Ritchhart, “it draws us together and helps us to bond with others.”
How can we build learning communities that students perceive as fair? First, we can ask ourselves:
- How is my decision making transparent to my students?
- What gets celebrated, or acknowledged, or raised up in my classroom and my school?
- Who gets celebrated? Who doesn't?
The messages we send through interactions like these show our students what we value most. If we’re sending the wrong messages, we should work to improve them. One way to do that is to make our thinking visible to our students by sharing more about what we’re thinking. Our approach to responding to misbehavior is one way to change our message. When we take the time to learn more about what students are thinking, why they are making the behavioral choices they do, and focus on that rather than solely on punishment, we’re communicating that we care more about students’ development as members of our learning community than what they did wrong.
In addition, when we allow our students to play an important role in setting the expectations and boundaries for behavior in class, they are more invested in its success. By serving as a warm demander, we are showing our students that we trust them to set and achieve those expectations themselves. And when they fall short, we can all work together to learn how behaviors outside of our expectations impact everyone. That level of transparency affects how everyone in the class performs moving forward.
By modeling curiosity and respect, showing fairness and transparency in our thoughts and actions, and working together to build a learning community in our classroom that values everyone’s individual roles, we can set our students up for success. As Dr. Ron Ritchhart notes, ‘Students Learn Best When Known, Valued, and Respected by Both the Adults in the School and Their Peers.’
