This summer I worked with international teachers, getting ready to teach in the U.S. at  Lakota Reservations. My group consisted of experienced teachers with a long history of teaching in a country where they were expected to be and taught to be authoritarian teachers. Each arrived at their new school with their teacher-made rules charts - the first thing that they posted in their classrooms. I met with one of these groups after they had already been teaching on the reservation for a couple of weeks.

In my view, one of my most important jobs was to communicate that children who create their classroom rules love their rules and are committed to following the rules in their classroom community. We RC Consulting Teachers know that the best way to communicate this is to begin by creating our adult rules with our participants. My participants created their hopes and goals for our course. At each step I mentioned that this process is exactly the way we create hopes and goals for students in RC. I’ve learned that if I’m not explicit, participants miss the point. We created our adult goals and posted them. Then we created rules that will help their goals come true.

With this done, I began to use the rules. As I began to introduce Interactive modeling. I asked, “Which rule will help you notice how to use IM with your own students?” After the segment on IM I asked my participants to score themselves, “Fist to five, how did you follow the rules that we created for our group?” They were enthusiastic - the room buzzed with new empowerment.

My participants had so many questions. “Is it ok for children to create new hopes and goals as the year goes on?” The answer is “Yes.”

“Is it ok to change the rules?” Again the answer is, “Yes, as a community activity with your students.”

As the day went on, participants self-assessed and talked with their partners about how the rules that our group had created were helping them achieve their goals for themselves. I referred to our rules frequently, sometimes every hour but always at least every few hours.

At the end of the day I said, “If you teach children in grades one or up, go back to your classroom and take down your teacher made rules. It’s time to start the process of creating your community-made rules.

I’ll be back for a Kaleidoscope Day. I eagerly anticipate using this opportunity to see how the teachers and students will embrace their community created classroom rules.

reiterate that the next part is for them as adult learner, AND I want them to be tracking how they are feeling and what they are thinking as we go through it. I also ask them to be thinking about how students might respond. At the end of it all, I ask them what they noticed and I then summarize the steps of the process as it relates to students. Finally, I have them reflect on how they feel or felt throughout the process. We discuss and then I end with "Well if it felt good to you and us as a group, just think about how your students will feel and how invested they will be in to living out the rules creating a positive classroom community."