A Model for the Creation of
Meaningful Community College Learning Experiences

Creating an
ENRICHED SOCIAL Learning Environment

 

Building a Strong Community
Consensus

Once the teacher and students have successfully established a safe social environment, it's time to begin thinking about enriching the social environment. Kaufeldt (1999) cites DeGiulio, who gives a good definition for our purposes of an enriched social environment:

Inclusion in a prosocial classroom means that students see and are inclined toward a common good--the good of others in addition to their own individual good. They learn how to live with one another and how to be part of a group. They learn how to get their needs met, but not at the expense of others. (p. 60)

Kaufeldt adds, "If students feel included in a classroom and see themselves as part of multiple support groups, they immediately feel a sense of security and empathy. They can also draw energy, ask for feedback, and receive encouragement from a group of peers when they feel overwhelmed." (p. 61)

Certainly this is what we want happening in our classrooms, but it doesn't just happen. One problem anyone who has worked with small groups at all notices is how certain individuals tend to gain control in groups. Sylvester (2000a) explains how this happens and tells us that it is a normal occurrence:

It is adaptive for a social species to develop a system that arranges groups into reasonably compatible hierarchical arrangements to better perform various group tasks (and especially those over evolutionary time that involved skilled movements). The entire group benefits if survival-related tasks are assigned to those who are generally recognized to be the most capable. (p. 53)

Even though we can understand this human tendency from a biological perspective, we realize that this inevitably means someone will be at the bottom of the pile. Sylvester then goes on to explain that the result of this is often anti-social behavior.

When young people find themselves in a situation in which they see no hope to rise within mainstream society, they may create their own hierarchical gang cultures (and classroom cliques) that provide them with opportunities to succeed within their counterculture's mores. ... The fewer opportunities young people have to succeed in mainstream society and the classroom, the more social instability we can expect. It is not in our nation's interest to support exclusionary policies that limit social goals, reducing the powerful role that schools play in helping students seek their dreams. The classroom can be an important laboratory for this process. (p. 56)

In Education on the Edge of Possibility, the Caines (1997a) also make note of this tendency:

Groups do not automatically enhance learning for all students. We suggest that groups must be engaged in generally challenging activities while attention is paid to social and emotional interactions. ...If interactions are limited to only a few high-status individuals, the immersion effect is minimized. Ideal social relationships are complex. They are those in which everyone is a learner and everyone is a teacher. In other words, there must be a genuine atmosphere of learning. Students teach each other. Students teach the teacher. ... What must be present are a sufficient degree of respect, a grasp of reality, and the freedom to engage in complex interactions. ... Teachers need to facilitate bonding, encourage student leadership, communicate on different levels and in different ways, and respect cultural differences. And they must genuinely appreciate and feel a sense of the community that they seek to establish for students. (pp. 126-127)

BUILDING A STRONG COMMUNITY
How can we teachers contribute to the development of an enriched social environment, one in which students actively support and care for each other? The Tribes approach is one way. This approach was developed by Jeanne Gibbs about twenty-five years ago to develop community in classroom settings.  Gibbs has developed a training program and written a comprehensive guide to the process, TRIBES: A New Way of Being Together (2001), which provide step by step suggestions for building community is school settings. "A central concept of Tribes is that people who do not have inclusion within a group gain inclusion (attention) by asserting influence:  they act out or drop out."  (Gibbs,1998, Stated Mission... ¶ 5) Gibbs points out that we must teach the social skills of collaboration and motivate students to use them so that we can eventually transfer leadership and individual accountability to peer groups. Although this takes time, the positive social interactions that develop and the learning that takes place make it worthwhile. Another very similar approach comes from Project Adventure, which primarily seeks to build through community through challenging, cooperative physical activities such as rope climbing. Laurie S. Frank (2001), in her book The Caring Classroom, takes strategies from the Project Adventure program and applies them to school settings. Both approaches have much to tell us about building strong communities.

Gibbs (2001) says that the goals for students in a healthy social environment are to

• actively participate in the learning process
• communicate and work well with others
• value diverse abilities and cultural differences
• assume responsibility for their own behavior
• develop critical thinking and collaborative skills
• improve their sense of self-worth and mastery of academics (p 23)

Regardless of what we teach, I think these are goals that we would all have for our students. We can learn a lot from these to approaches, so I'd like to present a brief summary of both approaches.

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Building a Common set of Values
The first step in building a positive social environment is getting students to accept some key values:

• Attentive listening: We recognize that most of us are very poor listeners. Yet we all know the strong desire to be truly heard and understood. The Ordered Sharing strategy from the Caines is one way to teach attentive listening. One strategy I use is a human tape recorder activity. One person speaks to a partner for a short time on a specific topic and then the partner tries to repeat back everything word for word. Paraphrasing activities also strengthen listening skills. When we paraphrase someone else's ideas, we might say, "This is what I understood you say." Attentive listening also involves asking for clarification or for expansion of ideas when they are not clear.

• Appreciation/No Put-Downs: We use put-down humor so often that we may not even recognize we are doing it. Yet how many times have we asked ourselves if perhaps there was some truth to the put-down. We need to avoid put-downs, no matter how innocent because we can't ever be sure who another will respond. Spencer Kagan (2001) suggests a "Pass-N-Praise" activity to help students learn how to express appreciation. In this activity, students validate the work of other students in the group by saying things like, "The thing I like best about this paper is..." or "You did a really great job on..." Each person in the group gets an opportunity in this way to validate every other person. Regardless of the quality of the work, students need to realize there is always something good one can say. As groups get more comfortable with each other, they can begin calling each other when put-downs come up, whether verbal or non-verbal.

• Right to Pass: This is a difficult one for us teachers to implement because it means we have to give up some control. The right to pass means that students have the right decide to what extent they wish to participate, or not to participate. Gibbs (2001) says:

It is the essence of our democratic system not to be coerced, to have a right to one's privacy, and to take a stand, if necessary, apart from the majority. Without such guarantees, individual freedom within a group is not projected. Choosing the right to pass means that the community member prefers not to share personal information or feelings, or to actively participate in the group at the moment. It may be their choice to remain quiet and to be an observer for a short period of time. This right must be affirmed repeatedly by teachers and peers: "OK, you do have the right to pass. It's just fine to do so." Being a silent observer is still a form of participation and can also lead to greater learning.

This protective agreement is essential within all organizational and group settings because it provides control to members. In encourages students to be self-determining and responsible for their own well-being among peers. It gives members the practice and courage to stand back from situations that are uncomfortable or contrary to their own values. (p. 95-96)

The right to pass does not apply when individual accountability is required, as with homework assignments, tests, or any other required work for a course. However, in group projects, a teacher may allow a student the right to pass by allowing a student to do an alternate project alone if the student requests it. The right to pass validates the uniqueness of each learner. To have the right to choose when and to what extent one will participate in a group activity; to observe quietly if not participating actively; and to choose whether to offer observations later to a group when asked to do so give the individual learner a sense of control.

• Mutual Respect: This is an explicit understanding that everyone is granted respect regardless of individual cultural values, beliefs and needs. It also involves an understanding that there will be no gossiping about others in the group behind their back and that confidentiality will be honored when requested.

• Mutual Goals: This is an explicit understanding that the members of a group are committed to providing for the physical and emotional safety of the group.  It becomes a mechanism for dealing with problems as groups establish their own rules.  It is also an explicit  agreement by members of the group to work towards group and individual goals.  It insures that individuals within the group will adhere to a common set of expectations. It can very difficult for groups to arrive at goals that are important to everyone. It helps to start out with smaller goals.  As groups learn to work together, larger goals can be defined.  My classes are structured into four modules and students form different "teams" for each module. For the first module, I give the groups their goals. These goals are adapted from those suggested by Jensen at the How the Brain Works Conference (2001)
  • Everyone participated today.
  • We had good team spirit.
  • Everyone was on time at beginning of class and after break.
  • We had fun.
  • We learned something new or useful.
  • We rotated to a new table.

Each team makes a chart at the beginning of the first module listing these goals. At the end of each class, the team gives themselves a rating on their own performance based on their own rating scale. I do not evaluate these charts in any way. I use them simply to help the students learn how to work together and evaluate their progress in working together. With further modules, the groups make up their own goals. By the fourth module, I ask them to make up goals that reflect the specific needs of the whole group. For example, if a group is having trouble writing well organized essays, they can make it a team goal that everyone on the team will be able to write a well organized essay by the end of the module.

Developing a common set of values in this way ensures that students will feel safe. In the beginning of the semester, students may not always be successful in abiding by these values, but it is important that students be willing to commit to them as much as possible.

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Forming Groups
Forming groups can be problematic. It's not unusual for certain students to want to be together all the time and for at least one student to be ignored by everyone else. Gibbs recommends forming trial groups for one month and then forming permanent groups for the rest of the learning term. I have had a lot of success with forming new groups for each of my four modules during the semester. There are many ways to decide who will be in each group. Usually for the first module I let the groups self select. After that, I try to mix up the groups so that everyone is working with at least two new people. If my classes were larger, I would insist that students work with completely different people each time. We do a kind of musical chairs activity to form new groups quickly. While the music is playing, the students move to new tables. When the music stops, if there aren't at least two new people at the table, the music starts again until every table has at least two new students.

Gibbs provides a process for selecting groups that have a sociometric balance. Click here to read about it.

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Stages of Group Development
Our goal in creating a enriched social environment is to have groups that assume responsibility for the collective good of the group as well as the good of each individual. There is a typical process that all groups go through in order to reach this level of interaction.

Inclusion: Typically, as new groups are formed, there is a period of superficial harmony.  People seem to get along fairly well because annoying behaviors are ignored.  But there may also be a fair amount of anxiety and fear about acceptance by the group and one's own ability to perform within the group.  At this stage in the group process, it is imperative that all students feel included and equally valued.  Since the students do not yet know each other, the teacher plays a key role at this time. It may be necessary to establish some rules such as  no put-downs.  During this phase,  the teacher gives a lot of encouragement.  When students give encouragement to each other, it is reinforced.  Hidden agendas are teased out and barriers are broken down.

The obvious first step is that students must get to know each other, not just names but also each individuals interests, feelings, special talents and expectations. This means we need to take class time and plan get-to-know-you activities early in the semester. There are many, many ways to get students introduced to each other. Some of these are listed in the Strategies section of Classroom Applications.

Inclusion, however, doesn't happen in just one class of introductions. I find giving students a chance to talk with each other about their personal lives helps build the sense of community. Taking a few moments in some classes during the first few weeks of the semester to include some other inclusion activities is helpful. Joyce White, a former ESOL adjunct at TC3, introduced me to this idea. She often begins her classes by asking each student to share either something good or something new that happened since the last class meeting. Designing activities where everyone must participate is also a good. Examples include brainstorming, jigsaw activities, simple projects such as a poster, and games. Kagan (2001) suggests an activity called "Talking Chips." In this activity, each student is given some kind of chip, for example, small pieces of paper, buttons, paper clips, plastic spoons, or whatever. Every time a student speaks during a group activity, the chip is placed in the center of the table. The student may not speak again until everyone has placed his or her chip in the center of the table. The chips are then retrieved and another round begins.

Eric Jensen used a GLP walk to incorporate movement and build community during the How the Brain Works Conference. Click here to see how this works.

Influence: As people in the group get to know each other better, trust may begin to grow. However, as people begin to feel freer in taking risks, friction also begins to develop, usually over fairly unimportant differences.  They may start making suggestions or criticizing or feeling restless. Conflicts may begin to arise about how decisions are made. The friction is usually symptomatic of issues related to values, space, power and control.  Here the main concern in group development is influence.  During this phase, students also begin working together to make decisions.  They begin to take responsibility for leadership, resolving conflicts and setting  goals by themselves.

The teacher's role now must shift to one of guide rather than leader.  In a successful community, all of the participants are valued for the unique contributions each can make.  It is time for the teacher to reduce her control of the students and allow them to work through the conflict and begin establishing norms of behavior in the group.  If the deeper issues are not dealt with, the group will no longer function effectively and may break up.  However, when these issues are dealt with openly and honestly, the group can move on to forming norms for relating to each within the group.  The group begins to create its own unique sense of values, space, power and control.  At this point, the teacher becomes more of a process observer.  The group finds ways to achieve common goals utilizing the unique strengths of each individual in the group.  And this helps the group to deal with future conflicts and challenges.  Getting students to assume responsibility for their own learning means that at some point the teacher must step away from control, which I will admit is hard to do. Gibbs (2001) suggests some ways to do this:

• Intervene only when necessary in group work
• Remind students from time to time of the values we are espousing in the class
• When students ask questions, turn the question over to other members of the group
• Ask groups to give feedback to you, the teacher, and make suggestions about class activities and goals
• Have individual students be process observers Click here for a Process Observation Checklist

An example can help to make this clear.  When students are first placed in a group, no one eagerly takes on the leadership role.  The role may have to be assigned by the teacher.  As the group begins working together, conflicts may arise because of the leadership style of the person chosen to be leader.  If the students are allowed to deal with this challenge, they may resolve the problem in any number of ways:  rotating leadership responsibilities, asking someone else to be the leader but giving control functions to others in the group, making rules about how the leader should do his or her job, and so on.  As long as everyone in the group is committed to working together, a satisfactory solution is usually possible that honors each person in the group.

If a person does not feel included, he/she will create his or her own inclusion by grabbing influence--attracting attention, creating a controversy, demanding power, or withdrawing in a passive belligerence." (Gibbs, 2001, p. 76)

While the teacher needs to step back during this stage of group development, the teacher must still be active as a process observer. There may be times when things get out of hand, when a group cannot resolve a particular issue, that the teacher will have to step in. When things do get out of hand, Gibbs (2001) recommend the following approach:

Call out, "Freeze," "Time out," or "Stop the action!" Wait patiently until order and silence fill the room. Then simply ask "What's happening?" First ask everyone to look and listen back to what was going on in the classroom or tribes (groups). ... You may want to list some reflection questions on the board, and give people thinking time. The first question for each person to answer should be "I saw myself..." (Describe your own behavior, not that of others.) "I felt ..." (Describe your own feelings during the interaction.) Then ask for descriptions of specific sounds and actions. ... Ask how people felt and how the behavior or situation affects the class as a whole. Invite or brainstorm ideas to change the situation. Have everyone decide what to do to improve things. (p. 115)

As students seek influence, they also need to build trust. They should be learning to work together without humiliating anyone.  They begin to feel free to take risks and understand what it means to be trustworthy.  At this point, the students themselves begin to monitor their own interactions and set their own rules.

Community.  During this last phase, students begin taking on their own individual goals as well as group goals.  The community provides needed support as individuals reach out beyond their own comfort zone to help and support each other. Leadership is shared and the various roles and capacities of each are respected as valuable. The group celebrates the achievement of itself and of every individual in the group. Members of the group are not put off by disagreement or misunderstanding. They have tools to deal with uncomfortable situations. When someone breaks an agreement or fails to meet expectations, the group is able to deal with it. During this phase, the teacher becomes a collaborator, offering suggestions and guidance, but giving plenty of space to the groups to take initiative and direct their own learning.

I would like to share the experiences I have had in my classes with community building activities.  Communication is the primary objective of any ESOL class, so it is absolutely important to develop a strong sense of community so that students freely engage in communicative activities.  In the beginning of every semester, students from several different countries are suddenly thrust together, some willingly and others only reluctantly.  Since it is often their first semester attending college in the United States, they have high levels of anxiety about their own ability to succeed.  They are often overwhelmed by culture shock. And to top it all off, they may be asked to work in a group with people from countries that traditionally have been antagonistic toward each other.  They reluctantly talk with each other and very often only listen poorly.  However, by the end of the semester, the picture is entirely different.  The students not only enjoy each other's company in class, but they often continue their friendships for years after the class has ended.  They are concerned about each other, root for each other's success, and empathize when things don't go well.  This doesn't happen simply by virtue of sitting in the same classroom for fifteen weeks.  As a teacher, I plan many activities intentionally to build community in the classroom. I am always pleased when students come back two or three semesters after finishing ESOL class and thank me for their time in ESOL. They are glad for the skills they learned, but more importantly, they are grateful for the social community that they experienced in their first semester and the strength and courage they continue to receive from their class members several semesters later.

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CONSENSUS

A mark of a group that is working well together is the ability to come to consensus. Consensus implies that the group is able to put aside individual agendas in order to reach a mutually acceptable decision. Parker Palmer (1983) cites Jay Hall, who studied consensus building interactions among groups, by saying:

Consensus is a decision process for making full use of available resources and for resolving conflicts creatively.  Consensus is difficult to reach, so not every ranking will meet with everyone's complete approval.  Complete unanimity is not the goal--it is rarely achieved.  But each individual should be able to accept the group rankings on the basis of logic and feasibility.  When all group members feel this way, you have reached consensus as defined here, and the judgment may be entered as a group decision.  This means, in effect, that a single person can block the group if he thinks it is necessary; at the same time, he should use this option in the best sense of reciprocity. (p. 95) 

Parker goes on to list some guidelines that Hall suggests using to achieve consensus. It is very helpful to review these with students whenever they need to discuss a topic and reach a collective decision.

• Avoid arguing for your own rankings.  Present your position as lucidly and logically as possible, but listen to the other members' reactions and consider them carefully before you press your point.
• Do not assume that someone must win and someone must lose when discussion reaches a stalemate.  Instead, look for the next-most-acceptable alternative for all parties.
• Do not change your mind simply to avoid conflict and to reach agreement and harmony.  When agreement seems to come too quickly and easily, be suspicious.  Explore the reasons and be sure everyone accepts the solution for basically similar or complementary reasons.  Yield only to positions that have objective and logically sound foundations.
• Avoid conflict-reducing techniques such as majority votes, averages, coin-flips and bargaining.  When a dissenting member finally agrees, don't feel that he must be rewarded by having his own way on some later point.
• Differences of opinion are natural and expected.  Seek them out and try to involve everyone in the decision process.  Disagreements can help the group's decision because with a wide range of information and opinions, there is a greater chance that the group will hit upon more adequate solutions. (p. 95-96)

Parker suggests a process for helping students become familiar with the guidelines. After discussing the guidelines with his students, he asks one group of students to work on a problem with the rest of the class observing. When the group finishes, he asks the whole class to comment on how well the group followed the guidelines and any other observations they might have. He asks for the class to suggest things the group could have done differently to make the process work better. If necessary, he will have a second group work on another problem with the rest of the class observing. This open modeling and discussion of the process of building consensus helps students gain competence and a clear understanding of expectations. They are then able to use the process successfully throughout the semester.

Martha Kaufeldt (1999) provides a quick device that groups can use to measure the level of consensus at any given point in a discussion. It is called the Team Decision Gradient. Once students are familiar with it, they can simply display the appropriate number of fingers to show how they feel about the decisions being made. This is the scale:

5. Love the idea! Think it is the best solution. Will support it completely.

4. Like the idea. I'm supportive. Have positive feelings about most aspects.

3. Can live with the decision. Ambivalent about the results. Have no strong feelings for or against.

2. Do not really care for the idea. Not in strong opposition, but won't stand in the way.

1. Strongly oppose at this time. Will make attempts to stand in the way. (p. 132)

I would recommend posting this Team Decision Gradient in the room so that students could refer to it whenever they need to.

Spencer Kagan (2001), in his article Teaching for Character and Community suggests several activities for building community. Click here to read them.

Many of the activities in the Classroom Applications section make use of small group work. Although it may seem that these types of activities take up a lot of valuable class time, it's important to remember what is really happening during that time. Students are deeply engaged in working with the material at hand. The learning is more meaningful, which means that it will last, and the students are emotionally and socially involved. If I ask myself what it is I want our students to remember five years from now, I'm sure my answer is not so much the specific facts of the content, but the deep learning of concepts and relationships that comes from these types of activitiestop

Learning-Centered Environment links:

	Creating a Learning-Centered Environment--Introduction
	Brain Function
	Creating A Learning-Centered PHYSICAL Environment Safe and Enriched
	Creating A Learning-Centered EMOTIONAL Environment Safe and Enriched
	Creating A Learning-Centered SOCIAL Environment Safe and Enriched
	The Model Introduction
	Dialogue on Learning Homepage