Navigating The Hub — We Turned Our Chaos into a Super-Team Solution (Yes, Really!)
Alone a youth runs fast, with an elder slow, but together they go far.
— Luo proverb
Hey everyone! So, you know how sometimes things in school get a little… spicy? We’ve had a few of those moments recently. But instead of throwing our hands up and saying, “Ergh, that’s just how it is,” we decided to do something awesome: we got the whole team together and made a plan!
Picture this: post-it-notes and markers flying, ideas buzzing, and a whole lot of “Wait, what if we tried this?” It was basically a superhero brainstorming session, but instead of saving the world, we were saving our sanity (and our students’ learning time!).
The “Let’s Get Real” Brainstorm Extravaganza!
We started by just being honest. Like, super honest. We wrote down on post-it-notes all the things that were driving us a little bonkers for 5 minutes. The classroom disruptions, the hallway hijinks, the “wait, did that just happen?” moments. We didn’t sugarcoat anything, because let’s face it, we’ve all been there!
Then, we pulled out our school’s behavior standards. You know, the official rulebook. And we were like, “Okay, have we been following these? Are we even on the same page?” Turns out, we’d been were definitely needed.
We then organized all of our post-it-notes into the 3 levels, and we discussed any behaviours that didn’t seem to fit into what the guidelines say about the levels.
We really needed to clarify some important words from the policy and ask, “What does this mean in Grade 4?”
- What does ‘promptly’ mean in Grade 4?
- Who should have the restorative conversations with students?
- What does ‘repeatedly’ mean? More than once? More than twice?
- When we’re busy, how will we remember who we need to chat with?
From “Ugh” to “Eureka! We Have a Plan!”
This is where the magic happened, folks! We decided to create some super-simple, super-practical plans, or as we like to call them, “Operation: Keep Our Sanity” guides. Basically, we figured out exactly what to do when certain situations pop up.
We broke it down into easy steps, like:
- “If a student’s being disruptive, first, we try this.”
- “If that doesn’t work, then we do this.”
- “And who do we tell? And where do we write it down?”
It was like creating a superhero team’s playbook, but for classroom management! We wanted to make sure everyone knew exactly what to do, so we could all be on the same page.
The “We’re All In This Together” Pep Rally!
Honestly, it was so cool to see everyone’s ideas flowing! We laughed, we brainstormed, and we came up with some seriously awesome solutions. It was a reminder that we’re a team, and when we work together, we can conquer anything!
Our very first next step was to share our plans with Grade 4 students. Most students found it useful to clarify the boundaries. One student commented, “I think it’s fairer now because everyone has the same expectattions.”
We’re super excited to try out our new plans and see how they work. We know it won’t be perfect, but we’re ready to tweak and adjust as we go. Because at the end of the day, we’re all about creating a positive and awesome learning environment for our students.
So, that’s our story! What about you? What are your super-powered solutions for tackling classroom challenges? Share your ideas in the comments — let’s inspire each other!
