Class Pals

This past year I began a classroom community project called Class Pals which allowed students to build peer relationships with their classmates. I noticed that a lot of my students talked or played with the same students in our class constantly and others would feel left out. In addition to that, our related arts teachers would tell me how my students were talkative and rude to one another at times. I honestly did not know what to do when I began receiving the comments from the teachers because my students knew I expected a lot from them academically and behavior wise.

During my first two years my students had some issues with their classmates of course, but negative reports were definitely not as common as this year. Now these students (year 2015-2016) weren't 'bad' or outright rude all the time, and honestly some of them were genuinely sweethearts. But there were those few who were attention seekers and little instigators. Regardless, I still love them all.

So the idea of Class Pals sort of stemmed from Ms. Sheila Jane of Teach Happy Membership (check her out). Members of this group are occasionally matched with another member in order to network and build friendships. It's a great idea and I saw the potential of it being used in my classroom to help bridge my students' relationships (of course I put my own little spin on it - see below). By integrating it with our Leader in Me program, I figured it would help students practice using the 7 habits and exemplify leadership skills.

Foundation: I began this classroom community project in February. I created these rules (below) to help develop the foundation. When implementing new ideas or activities in the classroom, it is generally important to have set guidelines for students to follow. These rules are in an acrostic format, but also a set standard I expected from my students while working with others. In addition to establishing and reviewing the rules, it was important for me to explain why this initiative was implemented into our classroom. Students some times must understand the why to grasp a concept or idea. I discussed with my class some things I noticed and what their related arts teachers also noticed. I also explained what goals I had for this initiative and that was for students to become better leaders, more compassionate to others and team players. I couldn't just say this to my students but also remember to model what it means to be a leader, compassionate and a team player.

Pairing: Students were paired based off their interactions with one another. As mentioned, some of my students constantly interacted with the same people and didn't branch off to build other friend/relationships with others (unless I paired them for certain group activities). There is no set way to pair students. You can pair students by choosing sticks, you can pair them based off gender (girl/boy), count off by numbers, based off abilities, etc.

Implementing: Once students understood the purpose and received their class pal, I included in one of our Classroom News letters the objective of Class Pals so parents could also be knowledgeable of our classroom community project.

Once students knew their pals and letters were sent to parents, students received their calendars that outlined activities and events for the class. Students worked together during different subject areas, ate together at lunch, wrote letters to one another, wrote letters to administration and other things. Here's our calendar for February (it didn't download correctly, but I made the adjustments as best as I could).

Outcome: The outcome for Class Pals was better than I expected! Really! When students prefer to be paired with their class pals when their able to work with a partner, rather than their friends, something must be going right. Now I will be honest, some students were pretty reluctant when we began and some students were still not so keen to the idea throughout the semester, but there were still positive results. The related arts teachers began to have good reports at the end of their classes, students were more concerned about their classmates and classroom participation was better with more students who barely talk speaking out. I even noticed I was a bit happier some days.

(Class Pal letters to our principal)

I am not saying Class Pals will work for every class, even I am planning to change some things up next year. Since I'm going to a different school this upcoming year, I have to see how my students interact with each other to determine how I'm going to pair them. I also want to create more engaging activities and projects for the students to collaborate on. I'm not planning to implement this at the beginning of the school year, but probably around October. Class Pals also doesn't have to be used to improve student engagement or behavior. It can be a good way to just build classroom rapport in general. I enjoyed implementing Class Pals and I look forward to using it in the upcoming school term.