It’s about how we, as educators, can build a strong, supportive classroom community where every student feels seen, valued, and empowered to learn.

It’s easy to focus on the technical aspects of teaching—the lesson plans, the rubrics, the data analysis. Yet, the true magic of education happens when we move beyond instruction and intentionally build a culture of belonging. Think of a classroom where students eagerly participate, not out of obligation, but because they feel safe to take risks and are confident that their classmates have their back.

This isn’t a happy accident; it’s a direct result of a teacher’s commitment to fostering a community. It’s the difference between a group of individuals sharing a space and a true team working toward a common goal.

Creating the Foundation: Trust, Empathy, and Shared Norms

A flourishing classroom community isn’t built on rules alone; it’s built on a foundation of mutual trust and empathy. This process begins on day one, not with a list of “do’s and don’ts,” but with collaborative norm-setting. Instead of imposing rules, guide students in creating a shared social contract.

Ask them what they need to feel safe, respected, and successful in the classroom. This simple act shifts the dynamic from one of compliance to one of co-creation, giving students genuine ownership over their environment.

• Practice Active Listening: Show students that their voices matter. When a student speaks, listen attentively without interruption. Model this behavior for them and encourage them to do the same for their peers.
• Establish a Restorative Mindset: When conflicts arise, avoid a punitive approach. Instead, use restorative questions to help students understand the impact of their actions and repair harm. For example, “What were you thinking at the time?” or “Who has been affected, and how can we make things right?” This teaches accountability and empathy rather than simply enforcing punishment.

We Are All Learners: Cultivating a Growth Mindset

A classroom community thrives when everyone, including the teacher, is a learner. This means modeling vulnerability and embracing mistakes as part of the learning process.

By openly sharing a time you struggled with a concept or made an error, you signal to students that it’s okay not to be perfect. This vulnerability dismantles the barrier between teacher and student, fostering a more genuine connection.

• Model Vulnerability: Share a personal anecdote about a time you made a mistake and learned from it. This simple act humanizes you and creates a safe space for students to take academic risks.
• Celebrate the Process: Shift the focus from a final grade to the effort and growth that led to it. Use phrases like, “Look at how much you’ve improved on this concept!” or “I love the questions you’re asking—they show you’re really thinking critically.” This validates effort and encourages perseverance.

Fostering Connection: The Power of Rituals and Routines

Daily rituals are the heartbeat of a classroom community. They provide predictability, build social-emotional skills, and offer consistent opportunities for connection. The competitor’s article rightly highlights the importance of morning meetings, but the power lies in the intentionality behind them.

• Morning Meetings and Check-Ins: Begin each day with a dedicated time for students to greet one another, share, and engage in a group activity. This structured social time allows students to connect as people before they connect as learners.
• Use Collaborative Activities: Incorporate routines like think-pair-share, jigsaw activities, and Socratic seminars. These structures require students to rely on one another, listen to diverse perspectives, and work collaboratively toward a shared understanding. These aren’t just instructional strategies; they are tools for building interdependency.

Inclusive Representation: Valuing Diverse Identities and Experiences

A truly inclusive community ensures every student sees their own identity reflected and celebrated. This goes beyond multicultural holidays; it involves consistently and authentically integrating diverse voices and perspectives into the curriculum.

• Diverse Books and Materials: Stock your classroom library with books featuring a wide range of characters, cultures, and experiences. Use texts and resources that represent various backgrounds and perspectives, ensuring students feel seen in their learning materials.
• Student-Led Content: Allow students to share their own stories, traditions, and lived experiences. This could be through a “Show and Tell,” an identity project, or by inviting students to teach the class about a topic they are passionate about. When students are empowered to share their own cultural capital, it validates their unique identity and enriches the entire community.

By intentionally focusing on these strategies, we move beyond simply managing a classroom. We create a place where students and teachers alike are invested in each other’s success and well-being.

The result is a classroom that isn’t just a space for learning but a true community—one that nurtures academic growth, fosters emotional resilience, and prepares students for a world that needs collaboration and empathy more than ever.

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21st Century Classroom Communication

Technology Integration

Using technology, such as videos, tablets, visual aids, and other types of graphic organizers can help to engage students better. Be sure that the media you select is used to enhance the objective and better explain rather than using technology just for the sake of using technology. Many apps can be used to get students to give you feedback on whether they understand the lesson. Nearpod or Kahoot are a few that work well for all ages.

Students enjoy being able to participate and answer all questions as opposed to raising a hand and only having one student be able to give an answer. The data that can be collected through these apps is also helpful for the teacher. It is easy to get an idea of background knowledge fairly well in a quick way.

Collaborative Learning Structures

Cooperative learning is a great way to get kids to communicate with each other as well as with the teacher. It promotes positive interdependence, and the teacher should be sure to build in both individual and group accountability. Teamwork skills can be directly taught at the primary levels and reviewed in older grades. Face-to-face groupwork is important to students today, where much of their communication has become through a device. Explicitly teaching these skills is vital.

Active Listening and Questioning

Have a good, accurate idea of what the students already know (background knowledge) so that your questioning is on target, not too hard and not too easy. Focus the questions on a wide variety of students. Repeat what their answers are by paraphrasing and following up with clarifying questions. Make the questions open-ended as much as possible. Probe further after a student answers. Help them to do deep thinking about the topic. Asking why or challenging their assumptions/thinking will cause them to have a deeper understanding in the long run. Vary your vocal tone and speed to maintain interest. Move about the room so that students will continue to be engaged.

Maintain eye contact while students answer questions and use movement to convey enthusiasm for the topic. Students who feel their teachers are actively listening to them tend to build a better connection with that teacher and have more trust in the relationship.

Positive Reinforcement

Be sure to give positive reinforcement to students. It should be sincere and very specific. Smile at the student and tell them exactly what was so great about their answer. Using I-phrases can also help with praise. “I was impressed that you gave good eye contact to the entire class as you gave that speech” is one example of an I-phrase. Research shows that specificity is more powerful than a general phrase such as “good job!”

Metacommunication

It will be important to explicitly teach students how to be a good communicator.

Metacommunication is communication about communicating. This is not something that all kids will just pick up, so explicitly teaching these skills will be very helpful as they work in a group with other students and communicate with all other teachers around them. Model the thinking process for them. Go over how to enter a room, make eye contact, summarize, and be positive toward others in getting a message across.

Talk about how body language can positively or negatively affect the spoken word. Give them examples. Students today are exposed to electronic devices and do not spend nearly as much time in face-to-face interactions as they used to years ago. They often enter the school behind in this area.

Gather Feedback Regularly

Getting regular feedback from your students about your own communication is a must! For older students, written/computerized surveys may be used. For younger students, picture-based responses can be used while verbally asking the questions. You will want to know if the students feel safe in your classroom, if they are comfortable coming to you with questions, how well they can understand you when you speak to them, and what they wish they could tell you.

Younger students will quickly give you feedback if you ask them specific things. Older students may want more anonymity, and so an anonymous, brief survey will be helpful. Give the surveys several times a year. Show students you care, and you take their feedback seriously. This will help to build more trust. Doing this at first can be a bit uncomfortable, but the results make it worthwhile.

Incorporating Effective Communication Strategies into Your Classroom

As you plan each unit, be sure to plan for these specific strategies just as you would plan for a lesson. Not actively planning for them leaves it up to the chance as to whether or not you will build them into your classroom.

Putting cues to yourself on a slide in your presentation to the class is a good way to remind yourself of some of these strategies. Another strategy that works well is to put a visual reminder to yourself at eye level on the wall opposite to where you typically stand when you teach. As you move back and forth around the room, you will see this cue, and remember to use the strategy you are targeting.

Attend workshops about student engagement and effective communication. Kagan offers great engagement training as well as coaching. Your instructional coach in the building is also an asset to use when you are trying to improve in the use of these strategies. Regardless of the way you begin to implement, use a step-by-step approach, and do not give up. Write a yearly plan for yourself and review it at least monthly to chart your progress.

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This concept of having a successful classroom should be the aspiration of all who enter the teaching field. In fact, I believe most teachers have this desire. It is what pushes them to work beyond the time that is required for a full day, and it is what drives them to attend extracurricular events for students during their personal time.

Desiring the opposite is detrimental to not only the academic well-being of students, but also the social-emotional development of each child. Therefore, I find it hard to believe that a person’s entrance into this profession would be built upon the idea that success in the classroom is not needed. However, I do believe it is the lack of understanding of what makes a successful classroom that hinders some teachers from being successful.

A Strong Sense of Community

Students desire to feel welcomed and accepted when they leave the community in which they reside and enter our classrooms. There is an innate desire in a majority of all students to feel a sense of belonging in our schools regardless of how great or not so great their home life may be. Establishing a sense of community empowers students to be comfortable in the learning environment.

This comfortability enables students to freely make mistakes and celebrate triumphs as they grapple with the content. A strong sense of community helps to enforce the idea that every student is accepted. It provides covering in the classroom that protects students from the scrutiny of their peers when they struggle to master the standards, excel far beyond their classmates, or are just different in terms of social norms, or family constructs.

Having established a strong sense of community also helps students to better understand the inner workings of the world in which we live. Students are equipped with skills that promote teamwork and collaborative planning. They witness the power of what can be achieved when we all work together in harmony as opposed to constant silos. In turn, they also experience the need for healthy debates that lead to understanding of how to accept other viewpoints even when we do not agree.

Strong Classroom Engagement

Strong classroom engagement is one of the building blocks for successful instructional environments. It ensures that students have taken a vested interest in the content and are more likely to experience success on learning targets. A classroom that boasts high academic achievement and growth is more likely to produce scholars who are positive contributors to their class. Engaged students are more apt to assist in maintaining order and structure in the classroom as they want the learning experience to continue.

Furthermore, strong engagement has been linked to a decrease in behavioral issues. An ongoing concern from teachers with unsuccessful classroom environments is student behavior. I have heard countless teachers share that they can’t teach because the students will not behave. While there is no magic bullet to heal all behavior concerns, if the students enjoy what they are doing, they will be less likely to ruin instruction by displaying disruptive behavior. An engaged student is a focused student. Making our lessons and learning environments engaging focuses our students on what we desire, thus strengthening our classrooms.

Differentiation

In education, the one size fits all approach is rarely effective. A truly successful classroom is one that meets the needs of all learners. The idea that a classroom uses high achievement as the measuring stick for success is one that concerns me most. While achievement is an integral part high achievement is not the crux of a successful learning environment. I would argue that high growth is the key to a successful learning environment. High growth requires teachers to move students from their starting point to their next academic level.

This entails helping high achievers as well as struggling students to achieve more. For this to occur, differentiation must be commonplace. Lessons must be tailored to meet the unique needs of all students and truly achieve student success. If a successful classroom is our desire, teaching to the top, middle, or bottom cannot be our practice. Teaching to the needs of the individual student must be a fixed goal.

It is not uncommon to hear educators limit the idea of differentiation to an instructional practice. This misconception hinders movement towards successful classrooms. I believe that it is equally as important to differentiate when correcting behavioral concerns. For many, behavior differentiation occurs once students are assigned a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP). While a BIP is an excellent tool, there are instances where behavior can be corrected prior to getting to this point. Taking the time to see what positive reinforcement a student responds to and utilizing that information to encourage acceptable behavior will greatly impact the success of a classroom.

While achieving classroom success is not always an easy task. It is essential to the well-being of all students. Building a strong sense of community, having strong classroom engagement, and differentiating to meet the academic and social needs of all students work together to create an environment in which students can thrive.

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