On Fridays, I write a blog post for my seventh grade students and their families about what we were trying to do that week in class. On the first Friday of the school year, I asked students to reply to the post with a comment on their favorite part of the week and if they made any new friends:
My favorite part of this week was the picking out a good book. I like the book im reading now the books name is Honus and Me. I like this book because it is about baseball my favorite sport. I have not met a new friend yet I know some other friends in our reading class.
My favorite part of class this week was to look at your library. I really enjoyed all your books. I am really enjoying my book. I don’t normally like the genre i’m reading right now but I’m really enjoying it. I don’t know everybody’s name yet but I met a few new people.
My favorite part of class this week was getting to read, I find reading very relaxing and thought it was a nice break from having to learn a numerous amount of things about how this new school worked. I’m definitely enjoying the book I’m currently reading which is titled Assassin by Anna Myers, it wasn’t what I thought it would be, but it was still an interesting story. I was able to add many people from Reading class to my list of acquaintances and I hope that I can soon upgrade them to my list of friends.
I asked students about friends because I know that the key to deep learning is sharing our experiences and taking risks, and the only way that can happen is if we feel safe and if we feel like our classroom is a community. We have to know each other’s names; we have to see each other as individuals who belong here; we have to value and respect each other’s lives. I know that this takes time, and I know that developing a sense of “us” does not just happen. A sense of “us” must be nurtured within and beyond the classroom.
Lesley Roessing’s No More “Us” and “Them”:Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect guides and supports teachers in creating an atmosphere where students feel like they are part of a community while recognizing and celebrating difference. Roessing’s mission is to move teachers and students beyond messages of tolerance because merely tolerating the other keeps any sense of “us” or working together at a distance. Instead, Roessing’s lessons and activities nurture togetherness, imagining how we ought to relate to one another for the good of humanity.
I see this book as being really useful in an education class with pre-service teachers from a variety of content areas;Roessing offers getting-to-know you activities appropriate for the early days of the school year, whole-class projects, small group work, and end-of-the year experiences that can be useful in any classroom. Many of the lessons focus on literacy, but there are specific activities for math, social studies, and science.
I can also see this book being really helpful for first year teachers or teachers who want to refresh some of their practices. This book is a resource to enhance curriculum, to infuse a philosophy of community into teachers’ daily practices. For example, in her chapter “Everyone is an Expert: Valuing Diversity,” Loessing suggests teachers survey students about their areas of expertise. In making known this expertise, students discover the hidden talents and interests of their peers — hidden because we hadn’t thought to ask. Peers make connections, and gain respect for their peers: “Students will be seeing each other as valuable resources and, therefore, valuable people” (63).
And I can see principals reading No More “Us” and “Them” to offer suggestions to teachers and departments, moving the entire school toward a sense of “us.” For example, one project moves toward students collaboratively designing a metaphor for their classroom. Roessing writes, “These classmates saw themselves as integral parts of a mutual, symbiotic environment. Everyone fit in and had a place…A project such as this makes a picturesque bulletin board, a visual of the class that reminds the class of the strength and beauty in their differences” (39). I read Roessing’s argument for “us” as one that values individuals and difference, that needs every person to have a place so that the whole can be better.
Of course, asking students to design a metaphor is one thing, but bringing students to believe that they are, indeed, integral to the class, to the school, to society is a more complex process. In her chapter “Becoming Part of the Puzzle,” Roessing shares a choral reading activity of Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” (1904). She notes that not all students see themselves as part of America (or part of school). She suggests pairing Whitman’s poem with Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America” who adds himself and his “darker brothers” to America:
Teachers need to discuss that Whitman, as well as our Founding Fathers, did not include all people, as we sometimes do not, and that, while Hughes laments his exclusion from American society, he recognizes that a change in American is imminent, that “they” will eventually see his worth and beauty and feel shame (41).
Hughes’ phrase “darker brother” gives teachers a chance to talk about judging and being judged by appearances; accepting each other…and accepting ourselves.
Nurturing community in a diverse school setting is not easy and does not happen quickly. It takes some grappling and patience.
School may be the one place where students have an opportunity to sit alongside someone who does not look like them. School may be the one place where diverse voices and experiences can intersect, collide, and perhaps form and re-form. No More “Us” and “Them” reminds us that “community is built cumulatively, one activity at a time.” And for the community to look more like the sort of society we want to be, the activities and experiences must move us all closer to a collective “us.”
I am working toward this every day and hope my students can say that they’ve “upgraded” some of their classmates to the friend status this week.