Back to School: Building Community for Connection and Learning

This toolkit is designed to be flexible. You can use all of the resources or choose a selection best suited to your classroom. It includes:

• Educator reflection questions and actions steps 
• 10 activities for the first days of school
• 10 routines for beginning a lesson
• 5 routines for ending a lesson
• Readings, handouts, and videos to accompany activities

In order to develop classroom communities that are centered around relationships and care, educators need to start with themselves. This process involves reflecting on your individual identity (and considering how your identity uniquely impacts your lived experience), and then becoming aware of your beliefs, values, biases, politics, and emotional responses. Doing so empowers educators to be thoughtful about how these forces and factors influence their interactions with and expectations of their students.

Students will bring a range of experiences into the classroom. Incorporating SEL (social-emotional learning) strategies to build relationships and develop empathy will help students feel connected to their learning and to one another. This is especially important for students who have experienced trauma and/or grief caused by the pandemic and recent events in their communities and the world at large. 

Consultant and community college teacher Alex Shevrin Venet discusses four core priorities for trauma-informed instruction: connectedness, predictability, flexibility, and empowerment ¹ . At the heart of this approach lies the relationships between students and teachers. When teachers prioritize cultivating these relationships and developing students’ SEL competencies, everyone benefits. 

• Connectedness: When students have a strong relationship with their teachers and peers, it is easier to support their emotional well-being and respond to their urgent needs as these arise. Students need regular reminders that their teachers care about them, and they need opportunities to connect with one another in informal and academic contexts. 
• Predictability: By creating predictable routines and structures, teachers can help their students feel safe and emotionally secure. Using routines such as check-ins and journaling can help students engage with the learning and can support their emotional well-being.
• Flexibility: Incorporate best practices in culturally responsive teaching and differentiation by adopting a flexible approach to instruction and assessment. Prioritizing what really matters in a given moment, even if it means letting go of some content, and engaging students in this process allows them to feel a sense of agency over their own learning and the classroom environment. 
• Empowerment: A classroom environment that takes into account the social-emotional needs and wide range of experiences that students bring with them empowers students by including them in the class decision-making and provides them with authentic choices and tasks. Tapping into their expertise and interests and giving them voice and choice to make decisions about their learning will develop their SEL competencies and their sense of agency.

• 1Kara Newhouse, "Four Core Priorities for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning", KQED, April 6, 2020.

Set aside time for personal reflection and practice self-care by making room for the people and things that bring you joy. This will help you recharge so that you are able to be intellectually and emotionally available to your students and loved ones this year.