Revising the First Few Weeks

I feel like one of the most difficult questions that Garth, Mike and I get asked at are "How do you get your students to work independently?" For the past two years I have always deferred the question to Garth or Mike depending on which one was standing closer to me when I got asked the difficult question. I deferred it for a reasons: I felt like they were more successful at it, I hadn't devoted as much time at the beginning of the year to creating the culture and I was unsure of how to explain it. With a few changes in my school's schedule I was able to devote more time at the beginning of the year to try and create the classroom culture. It was a slow and at times difficult process but, I have already seen a lot of benefits.  started to see some of the benefits of it. In this post I will attempt to explain what the first few weeks of the school year looked like and how we create the culture that we want.    

We start the school year talking about perspective and how things aren't always what they appear to be (hadoken). 
During these few days we talk about how we need to keep in mind how someone's perspective could impact what is written. We also talk about Hadoken images and give the students an opportunity to make their own Hadoken images. For more information on our Hadoken lesson click here to see a previous Hadoken post.

After the perspective and hadoken topics we spent some time having the students bookmarking websites, and setting up their drive folder for the rest of the year. 

The image that I (Travis) use to show my students that people can be looking at the same picture and see something completely different.

We then moved on to talking with the students about the classroom rule procedures. I started the conversation by asking the students "How are laws made?" Are they made in a proactive or reactive fashion? 

The easily seen pay offs include not having to pick up trash left on the floor, not having to deal with papers left behind by the students, and never needing to worry about putting computers away just to mention a few. I realize on the surface these could seem like insignificant things but, I think it speaks volumes to the mutual respect that has been created between me and my students.