Your classroom culture is what teaches students how to behave, whether you’re the one doing the teaching or not! In this episode, we’re talking about how to intentionally shape a positive classroom culture that makes classroom management easier. We break down five practical steps and explain how social skills, positive peer pressure, and clearly reinforced expectations can help students take more ownership of how your classroom works.

Prefer to read? Grab the episode transcript and resources in the show notes here: https://www.secondstorywindow.net/podcast/positive-classroom-culture/

Resources:

• Order our book: Structure and Spark
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Related Episodes to Enjoy:

• Episode 283. Why Reaching for a Reward System Might Be the Wrong First Move
• Episode 245. How to Build a Teacher Wardrobe That Fits Your Life
• Episode 150. Perfect Your Classroom Procedures with the Help of Our Guiding Questions
• Episode 278. Want Better Behavior? Start with Relationships
• Episode 87. 4 Important Ways to Build Classroom Community at Back to School

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Teacher Approved Club, where members get seasonal morning work pages for grades K–5 this month to add fall and holiday fun without throwing off their routines: https://secondstorywindow.net/club

This is episode 285 of Teacher Approved.

You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping

educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I'm

Heidi.

And I'm Emily. We're the creators behind Second Story

Window, where we give research-based and

teacher-approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and

more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources

from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to

the show.

Hey there! Thanks for joining us today. In today's

episode, we are talking about how to shape your classroom

culture so it can boost your classroom management, and we've

got a tip for making your mornings a little easier.

But first, let's start with a try it tomorrow, where we

share a quick win that you can try right away. Emily, what is

our suggestion this week?

Okay, this week look at the school calendar and get all

the upcoming school theme days or dress up days on the

calendar. Maybe even set a reminder for the day before so

that you're not scrambling in the morning.

And also, if you need to buy anything like new pajamas

for pajama day or a shirt in a certain color, order it now so

that you have exactly what you need.

And if you're worried about how to look cute in the

school T-shirt you're expected to wear, go back to episode 245

where Lindsay from Fashion Fix shared a teacher-approved tip

for how to style a school shirt. She had some really great ideas.

And if you like this idea or anything else we share here

today, would you do us a favor and share this episode with a

teacher friend? People trust recommendations from people they

know. So every time you share our show, it really does help us

out.

Okay, we are officially in September, which means a lot

of our listeners are starting school this week. And if that is

you, happy first week! We hope everything goes smoothly.

And actually, a lot of teachers have been back in

school for weeks already.

Yep, especially around where we are. And if that is

you, then we hope everything is continuing to go smoothly a few

weeks later.

But wherever you land on the back to school spectrum,

hopefully you're in a situation where you only have 16 kids in

your class, and they're all eager, focused learners.

Yes, I really hope that's true for all of you, but more

likely, let's say there are 25 students in your classroom,

maybe 30, maybe more, and there is one of you.

I don't like that math.

No.

Because even if you are the most present, most connected

teacher in the building, there is no version of the day where

you can personally manage all of those kids all of the time. It

is absolutely impossible.

Right. Because while you're helping one student

understand the assignment, there's two kids that are

deciding whether to stay focused or start talking. Someone just

knocked over their pencil box, and their neighbor is looking

around to see if it's okay to laugh. Another student is trying

to decide whether it's socially acceptable to ask a question

that they think might sound dumb.

And you aren't there to personally coach students

through every one of those decisions. You physically can't

be, which means that for most of the day, your students are not

being managed by you at all. They are being managed by each

other.

Yeah, and this is a part of teaching that we don't

discuss enough. The social environment in your classroom

develops its own answers to questions like, is it cool to

try, or is it cooler to pretend that you don't care? How do we

respond when somebody is being annoying?

Or is this a room where we help each other, or a room

where we look out for ourselves? The answers to these questions

aren't just individual behavior choices; they are cultural

norms.

Classroom culture is the collection of unwritten rules

about how things work. Is this the kind of classroom where

people stay on task if the teacher has to step in the hall

for a minute, or is it the kind of class where the teacher's

absence is an excuse to run wild?

That always bugs me about teachers on TV or in movies. You

know, they just step into the hall for a five-minute chat

without a second to worry about what's breaking up behind them.

One of the most unbelievable parts of Abbott

Elementary. Even though I love Abbott Elementary, but frequent

hall chats with multiple teachers. That's not, that's not

realistic, and obviously that's because those teachers are lucky

enough to have writers telling those kids what to do. But

sadly, someone forgot to hand out the script to the rest of

the kids that we have in our classrooms.

Which is why culture matters so much. It's

essentially the script your students follow for knowing how

to behave from minute to minute, which makes it much more

influential than the rules hanging on your wall.

And unlike classroom rules, culture will develop

completely organically. Which means if you don't decide to

shape your culture on purpose, you are basically letting the

loudest voices in your room do it.

Sometimes that works out beautifully. You get two or

three natural leaders who set a great tone, and then you can

just ride that all year and feel like a genius.

Uh huh. But more often than not, you end up with a

culture of chatting and nonstop water bottle flipping contests.

The reason culture is such a potent tool is because of

something called social contagion. Like that back to

school cold that you're currently fighting off, behavior

also spreads.

You have definitely experienced how this works. So

when you are the new person at a job, you watch your coworkers to

see where to sit at lunch or how loud conversations can be, and

then you just copy what everyone else is doing.

Classrooms run the same way. When kindness and effort

and respect are the standard in a room, then kids absorb it and

reflect it back to each other without being asked. But it also

works in the opposite direction.

Yeah, if eye rolling is tolerated in September, eye

rolling is the standard by October. Kids are watching what

you let slide far more closely than they are listening to what

you say.

So when you're working against a student-created

culture, you spend the whole day putting out fires that the

culture started.

But with a teacher-led culture, your students hold each

other to the standard, and you have fewer problems to manage.

That's because you have peer pressure on your side.

We spend a lot of time trying to protect kids from peer

pressure, but the truth is, peer pressure is going to exist

whether we acknowledge it or not.

And that's why we definitely want to make sure

that the pressure in our classroom is pushing everyone in

a useful direction. Positive peer pressure makes the

difference between students watching someone disrupt a

lesson and joining in, and someone leaning over to whisper,

"Dude, stop! We're trying to work."

In the first few days of school, hopefully, you scheduled

time for important community building activities. But as we

move into the school year, your work here isn't done. A positive

classroom culture requires attention, the way that

relationships do.

But don't let that panic you. Unlike most lessons,

teaching students how things work in your room happens in the

little moments. When you respond calmly to a broken rule instead

of losing your cool, you teach that mistakes are expected.

Yeah, and when you invite a student to try again if

they've spoken harshly to a classmate, you teach that

respect and relationships matter in your class.

But if you want to be more intentional about shaping

your classroom culture, we've boiled down the whole process to

name it, teach it, practice it, notice it, and

protect it.

All right, let's walk through the first one, which is

name it. This is an easy one to skip over because it feels so

obvious, but it's worth saying it anyway. Start by finding 10

minutes on two different days for a class discussion.

For the first day, prepare a chart or a blank slide

with three columns. Label one column, "I want a teacher who,"

label the second column, "I want a classmate who," and label the

third column, "I want a classroom that," and then invite

students to share their ideas about how to complete those

sentences.

And then on the second day, post a chart or slide that

says, "We are the kind of class..." Refer back to the

previous day's poster. If we want to have classmates and a

teacher and a room that does all of those amazing things, what

kind of class do we need to be? Have students help you fill out

that second chart.

And you might need to share a few ideas to get the

ball rolling. So, for example, we're the kind of class that

protects learning time. We're the kind of class that makes

room for people, and we can disagree respectfully.

When you have enough ideas, post the chart where it

can be referenced. Then, when work time gets too noisy, you

can call students' attention to their own words. If this is the

kind of class that protects learning time, show me what I

should expect to see you doing right now.

You gotta love a tool that gets everyone back on track

without you having to issue a single correction.

So after naming it, the second step is to teach it. We all want

classrooms where students communicate, problem solve, and

include each other.

But those aren't personality traits; they're

skills. And if students haven't learned them, telling them to

work together is a little like handing everyone a recorder and

saying, "Okay, let's all play Uptown Funk."

You'd expect absolute chaos in a room full of kids

turned loose with recorders. So it's no surprise we get chaos

when we expect kids to know how to solve disagreements or how to

get in a group without any training.

So teach social skills the way that you would teach

anything. Name the skill, model it, let them practice, and then

discuss how it went when they put it in action.

Yes, that is right. You can tell try telly talk here

too. Think about the skills you want students to use in your

class and start teaching them one at a time.

And luckily, skill lessons are usually much shorter

than procedure lessons. If you have visuals for students to

reference, you only need two or three minutes to help them

understand what's expected. For example, how to respond when

you're frustrated. The steps would be one, pause; two,

identify the problem; three, ask for what you need; and four, try

a solution.

And then role play at a time or two. If the culture you

want requires a skill, don't assume students already have it.

You need to teach it.

Next up, it's time to practice. During the first few

weeks, add lots of low stakes group interactions to your

plans. Help students understand exactly what should happen

during turn and talk. How to form partnerships or groups

without leaving anyone out, and how to share materials.

During this stage, keep the focus on the social skills,

not academics. So, for example, my second graders worked with

partners several times a day. So, at the start of the year, I

taught them how to be good partners, and then gave them a

non-academic task like a get-to-know-you activity. My

goal is to give them practice working on the partnership

skills without worrying about content.

And you can do the same thing with group work or any

other learning formats. Review the skill and invite students to

practice with "Would You Rather" questions instead of math

questions.

And this is a game changer if you do centers. Stock

all of your centers with simple activities, even a coloring page

works okay here. And then focus on giving students practice with

managing materials, rotating quietly, working with an

assigned group, people they didn't choose. All of those

skills that go into making centers run smoothly.

You might not eliminate the issues completely, but

you'll have far fewer if students know how to succeed

before you expect them to both manage social and academic

expectations at the same time.

And then after the activity, don't just move on.

Take a couple minutes to debrief. What went well? What

was tricky? What will you remember to do next time?

And this step is easy to skip, but is crucial because the

activity itself isn't building your classroom culture; it's the

reflection afterward where all of this gets internalized.

The next way to shape classroom culture is to notice

the behavior you want more of. What you notice, you make

visible, and what you make visible has a better chance of

becoming contagious.

The catch is that generic praise does not do the same

thing. Good job, Table Three. It tells nobody anything about

anything. So name the behavior. I just saw three people move

their chairs that they could see the board better. That's taking

responsibility for your own learning.

Now you're not really saying this for the kids who

move their chairs, although you know everyone likes to be

praised. You're saying it for the other 22 because you just

gave them an example of what normal behavior looks like in

your room.

If risk taking gets highlighted, you get a class

that will make a guess, even if they're unsure. But if it never

gets noticed, you get 25 kids who sit and wait for you to hand

them the answer.

So you can start here by asking yourself, "What behavior

do I wish would spread around the room? And then pay attention

for the little examples of it. Notice the student who helps

clean up, the group that solves a disagreement, students who

redirect themselves, and the ones who make room for someone

else.

This isn't about manipulating anyone into good

behavior, and it's not throwing a parade every time someone acts

like a decent human being. The goal is to connect individual

actions to the larger well-being of the group.

Unless there's a problem later in the year, you probably

don't need to schedule time all year long to practice your class

norms. But noticing is ongoing because we want to keep our

class norms from drifting into the half-hearted attempts.

And that brings us to our fifth step: protect it. When

someone steps outside a norm, the most powerful thing you can

say is some version of "That's not how we do things here."

That might sound like "That's not how we solve

problems," or "You don't have to like what he said, but you do

have to respond respectfully."

Every time you respond to a behavior, you're not just

managing that individual student. You're also teaching

the rest of the room what the real rules of this community

are.

But if you allow the same norm violation over and over

without addressing it, you're teaching the class that

everything you say is optional, and that is not a lesson you

want students to learn.

At the end of the day, your classroom culture is

whatever pattern of behavior you permit. You may have a beautiful

poster that says we respect everyone, but if students

regularly talk over each other, exclude classmates, and make

little cutting comments, you don't have a culture of respect.

Yeah, the poster might reflect your values, but the

poster isn't your culture. The tolerated behavior is.

But don't feel bad if you have let things slide because we

have all been there.

Oh yes, that's because consistently upholding your

expectations is absolutely the hardest part of management. We

talked all about this a couple weeks ago in episode 283. So go

back and check that out if you missed it.

And if you need to course correct, consider what's

happening repeatedly in your classroom that you don't want to

normalize. Maybe that's calling out, complaining, tattling, or

students refusing to work together.

And then pick one of those and address it as a

cultural issue. Try saying something like, "I've noticed

this has started becoming normal in our room, and it's a problem

because it's keeping people from doing their best. Let's talk

about what we want to do instead."

And doing this at the start of the year will save you

time in the long run, but redirection can be done at any

point in the year.

Yeah, maybe you need to reset after a long break, or get

everyone back on track when spring fever hits. When that

happens, gather everyone for a discussion, talk about what's

going well and what isn't working.

And just keep the focus on students' ideas. Ask what

kind of class they want to have and what they need to do

differently to get there. Then name it, teach it, practice it,

notice it, and protect it.

As you settle into the regular rhythm of the year,

remember that the goal is to build a classroom where students

increasingly understand how to act, how to solve problems, and

how to treat each other, even when you are across the room

helping somebody else.

That doesn't mean there won't still be water bottle

flipping contests. There probably will be, or whatever

this year's version of six seven is going to be.

Oh no.

But when the culture underneath is strong, those

moments are smaller and shorter.

That's because your students have a shared framework

for making it right and moving on. And every time they work

through a hard moment together, the culture gets a little

stronger.

If this conversation was helpful, you definitely want to

join us in the Teacher Approved Club. This month, we have a

resource to help you make sure that all of the lessons you're

teaching students about how to function in your room stick in

their cute little brains. So there's a link to sign up in the

show notes, or you can visit us at secondstorywindow.net/club.

Now for our teacher-approved tip of the week, where we share an

actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and

simplify the rest. This week's teacher-approved tip is to get

multiple lunch bags. Okay, tell us about it, Heidi.

Okay, well I can't take credit for this. So, for the

past few weeks, Mackenzie's Journey on Instagram and

probably on TikTok has been sharing tips for how teachers

can prep their homes, not just their classrooms, for back to

school. And she has some really great tips that I would have

never thought of. And one of those tips is getting five lunch

bags. This seemed a little crazy till she explained it.

So, if you like to batch prep your lunches for the week, or if

you think this is something you'd like to try, you'll be

more likely to stick with it if you remove as many hurdles as

possible, even if all of those hurdles are small. I know when I

have batched lunches in the past, I would make all my meals,

and then I would have to fill up my lunch bag every day. But

every extra step in a system is a potential weak spot. And if

you're like me and running late in the morning, that extra step

of having to load your bag each day could be the step that

derails this whole plan.

So to counter that, Mackenzie got five lunch bags. So then,

when she's finished prepping the lunches for the week. She can

load all of the bags right then.

Dang, that is so smart. I guess sometimes it really is the

simplest ideas that can have the biggest impact. And I think a

lot of people would hear this and be like, "Oh my gosh, I do

not need five lunch bags." But in reality, it probably would

free up more space in your brain than you might realize.

Yeah, and I don't think it takes that much more space

because you have to have all of those containers in your fridge

anyway.

Yes, that's just meal prepping.

Yeah, now they're just packed and ready to go. And

Mackenzie even goes a step further. She has a fridge in her

garage, so she can put all of her lunches out there and then

just grab one as she's heading to the car. Oh, but even if you

don't have a second fridge, just having those extra bags could be

a huge lifesaver for you.

Well, these kind of, I hate to call it a hack, I don't

think it's really a life hack, but it's something you're

looking at something different in your life that you hadn't

looked at that way before. But I just lived for this kind of

stuff. I'm like, should I? I'm staying home, but should I prep

my lunches for the week and get five lunch bags?

You would feel super organized.

I bet I would.

Okay, to wrap up the show, we're sharing what we're

giving extra credit to this week. Emily, I get your extra

credit?

Okay, I'm giving extra credit to the movie Solo Mio,

which is a Kevin James movie. It was in theaters, I think. I

think?

I don't think so. I think it was for TV.

Oh, maybe it was just straight for TV. I don't know.

But I watched it on Hulu, I think. I was working on a

project a couple weeks ago, and so I blew through a bunch of

movies because I was just putting something on in the

background, and I was like, "Oh, I'll just give this one a try."

And it probably helps that I went in with rock bottom

expectations because I'm like, oh, you know how Kevin James is.

Although I do like Kevin James, but you know how his movies are.

But I thought this was adorable.

So the premise is that he is in Italy to get married, and his

wife or his fiance, I guess, leaves him at the altar. Now

this happens in like the first five minutes of the movie, but

then he stays for the next three weeks or something for the

honeymoon. So he's on this tour group basically for all that

time with all these other couples and newlyweds, and it's

just such a fun cast of characters. I love when a show

has fun side characters, but that are not too ridiculous, I

thought these were all like genuinely fun and cute. And I

don't want to give too much of the movie away, but I, I

honestly thought it was a really sweet little rom com watch, if

you're looking for something.

Well, I'll definitely have to check that out. That

sounds delightful.

What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

This is a hard pivot.

Yours usually are.

I'm giving extra credit to slim, non-slip metal hangers.

Oh, ooh la la!

So I don't know why I even ordered these, but they are

so nice. I've been switching out my regular hangers, and I, I

have had the same plastic black hangers probably for 20 or more

years. But I've been switching these out, and I cannot believe

the space it has freed up in my closet just to have these thin

hangers. So they're metal, but they're thicker than wire

hangers. You couldn't. I don't think you could bend them, and

then they're coated in like I don't know rubber silicone

something, so your clothes don't slide off them. It's a game

changer for how my closet looks so much neater, and I have way

more room. I am frankly surprised at the difference just

this little switch up made.

I've had those kind of hangers for years. Mine, I

think, are kind of like felt lined to keep the clothes on

there.

I have some that are, I tried some like velvet ones.

Maybe that's what it is, velvet.

And then, like at one point, it's like I'm going all

in on wood because I'm investing. And then I was like,

my clothes are, these are huge. My clothes are not nice enough

to need wood hangers.

They take up so much room.

Yes, and I thankfully only bought like five.

Well, good thing.

Anyway, yeah, I'm a big fan. I will put a link in the

show notes if you need to upgrade your closet.

I committed to wood hangers for my children when

they were little, and now I'm like, why did I do that? It

just, I felt like it made their closets look so cute with all

their little clothes, and now they their clothes are too big

for all those little wooden hangers, and I need to do

something with them. Maybe I'll get them some non-slip metal

hangers.

There you go. I think that's the only way to go.

Well, that is it for today's episode. Remember to name,

teach, practice, notice, and protect the classroom culture

that you want to cultivate.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm Heidi.

And I'm Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow

or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an

episode.

You can connect with us and other teachers in the

Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week.

Bye for now.

Bye.