Tangible Connections (continued)
last pillar of stewardship is “Living and Learning in Community”. Students are constantly engaged in this pillar with community agreements, trail roles, repeated opportunities to turn and talk about a prompt, meet people outside their normal friend groups, and meet children from other schools in the dining hall and during group games. Throughout the week we honor moments in which we see students exemplifying these pillars and ask them to reflect upon moments in which they saw others doing the same. This scaffolding encourages students to take responsibility for their impact upon the community and realize their individual influence.
In order to create a positive community atmosphere and set our students up for success, our team collectively creates a Community Agreement, which elicits knowledge from the students about what makes a caring and healthy community. Using a scaffolded approach, we begin by asking our students to reflect on community agreements they may have already encountered at their schools, in their classrooms, or with sport’s teams. Most, if not all, of those elements are applicable here at our IslandWood campus, as this is a “School in the Woods” not a sleepaway camp. There are many ways to make a community agreement, some of which are thematically illustrated in the form of a tree or tea, others can simply be a list of ideals. Specifically, we would like to focus on the construction and implementation of the Community Web, our twist on a communtiy agreement. Regardless of the theme, the Community Agreement is a living document and it can be added to and adjusted as different situations arise within the team.
Creating a Community Web
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
—Chief Sealth (Chief Seattle)*
Field groups read this quote out loud to initiate a conversation on the concept of community. Additionally, it is used for brainstorming who Chief Sealth was and his impact on creating connections between native and non-native people (for more information on teaching children about tribal sovereignty, see resources below). Many of our students, being from the Puget Sound region of Washington, know a little about Chief Sealth’s impact. When asked to recall information we often hear responses such as “he was a famous Native American chief who talked with settlers.” Recognition of the historical importance of Chief Sealth and how he contributed to building bridges between people is an example of how one can strive to increase connections and strengthen positive interactions within diverse communities. This also pays homage to Chief Sealth and his people, whose ancestral
*As Chief Seattle didn’t speak English, this quote is a common translation that is accredited to him.
Page 24 Students adding behavior norms to their Community Agreement. Photo: Alyssa Kaplan
land we now occupy, helping students to forge meaningful connections between their neighborhoods and IslandWood.
Once we’ve discussed the power of interconnections and prior experiences with community agreements, we then unveil the template for our team agreement on a large piece of butcher paper. In the center is the foundation of our web with the title, “[Team Name] Community Agreement” surrounded by a strand for each of our students, chaperones and instructors (Figure 1). Before we begin filling it out, we discuss characteristics of each visible aspect. Each team member chooses a strand to which they add their name and a strength that they will contribute to the team this week, it is important that they then share that strength out loud to the team. Generally these strengths are characteristics such as humor, artistic, problem-solver, helpful and kind. Occasionally, students respond with traits such as ‘crazy’, without context this could be misinterpreted, for this student it meant having lots of energy and therefore carried a positive connotation. By verbalizing traits, not only are we checking for understand but also learning how students view themselves and how they are comfortable contributing towards the team. Once each team member has added their name and positive attribute, we then brainstorm what sort of behaviors we want to see within our team. The goal with this is to establish team behavior norms to ensure we have a safe and fun week of learning and exploring. Behaviors brainstormed here generally include: be respectful, listen to each other, have fun, to be safe and neighborly (Figure 2). We explain that as team members exemplify these behaviors, they will get to draw a line that connects themselves to that behavior, thus increasing connections between team members and showcasing personal growth. In acknowledging the daily progress of our students, we are tapping into the reward pathway of the brain (Zadina, 2014, p. 102).
At the end of each day we revisit and review the community
agreement, add our behavior lines and a loop around the outside which symbolizes team building and connections becoming stronger between the team members (Figure 3). These additions enable the students to literally see the connections being created within our team, being able to visualize these connections adds meaning to the activity and utilizes the visual oriented regions
www.clearingmagazine.org CLEARING Spring 2018
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