We Agree!

Every new school year, I start by telling the students that this is “our” classroom. We discuss what we want our classroom to look and sound like and how we can make it an ideal learning environment.

This year, we began by comparing two pictures: one of an ideal classroom and one where chaos made learning nearly impossible. The students quickly noticed that the chaotic classroom looked unsafe, with mean behavior, yelling, and an absent teacher. In contrast, the ideal classroom had smiling faces, calm discussions, students working together, and sharing ideas and materials. Many students immediately expressed a desire for a classroom like the ideal one.

 

To dive deeper, I handed out two post-its to each student and asked them to write what they thought they would see and hear in our ideal classroom. We then gathered and analyzed these post-its, discovering six key categories: respect, manners, kindness, encouragement, safety, and learning.

At the end of the day, I promised to organize our ideas neatly for the next day. At Mid-Pacific, we value innovation and technology, so I introduced the students to a new tool we will explore this year: artificial intelligence. We used ChatGPT to help shape our classroom agreements based on our ideas. Although the AI-generated text was fantastic, the students felt it was too wordy. They wanted to keep it concise and easy to remember but also save the detailed descriptions for future reference.

Once we agreed on the final version, we created a poster for everyone to sign as a binding contract to uphold our agreements. The students worked incredibly hard and were very practical in their decision-making. We all feel confident that we have a great year ahead!