But First… Trust

Starting out as a novice classroom teacher twenty years ago, I would often begin the school year with a few fun and purposeful community-building activities that helped us get to know one another. Next, we would go over the classroom rules and consequences for breaking those rules. Then, having checked off that box, I’d shift to teaching and assessing content. I figured I had done what I needed to do to establish classroom culture and community.

Then I moved to a school where the principal added a note to her weekly staff email reminding us to spend time that week nurturing our classroom communities. She would say:

“I give you permission to balance the academic needs of your students with their social and emotional needs.” She shared that in the classrooms where trust was nurtured — student to teacher, and student to student — there were fewer behavior disruptions, and students spent more time in class, engaged in learning.

There are no perfect classrooms, but when I observed in classes with higher levels of trust, I saw more effective collaboration by students, more effective responses from teachers, and the students appeared to be more motivated when learning.

Even though at first it felt like a sacrifice in time, it actually paid itself back in dividends because the students’ learning was so much richer. It took a mindset shift and the creation of new habits for me to move from my original teaching model to one where I purposefully wove safety, in the form of community-building and trust, into each day, all year long. Research about the science of learning helped me make that shift. Namely, that within our brains, for deep and lasting learning to occur, safety takes priority (Professional Learning Partnerships, 2021).

When we are physically, socially, and emotionally safe, the brain’s emotion control center, the limbic system, gets the message that we can move out of survival mode. That message allows the brain’s neocortex to coordinate planning and complex thought, which is exactly what we need in order to learn.

In classrooms and schools, building trust helps staff and students feel safe, and lays the foundation for effective learning. Many schools and districts are currently prioritizing students’ and staff’s physical safety by sharing robust and responsive COVID health and safety plans. To foster their social and emotional safety, educators can prioritize building trust among all the members of a school community.

It’s important to remember that for trust to exist and grow, we need to go beyond just saying “I value building trust” and demonstrate these beliefs with actions. Here are some strategies supported by the science of learning, to advance trust and safety in schools

Strategies for Building Trust as a Leader With Staff:

• Be a learner -- model the vulnerable act of learning along with or ahead of staff, which includes sharing times that you make mistakes and how you’ve grown from it.

• Explicitly and proactively communicate what’s important to you as a leader, the expectations you have of staff, and what they can expect of you.

• Provide frequent, authentic, objective, and balanced feedback including recognition for meeting expectations effectively and reflection opportunities for how to meet expectations better.

• Ask for and accept frequent, authentic feedback about your ability to meet others’ expectations of you.

• When developing and facilitating professional development, understand and honor the characteristics and needs of adult learners, including the wealth of experience they bring, the need for autonomy, and learning that is relevant to their roles and goals.

• Co-create, practice, model, and consistently reflect on adult community norms.

• Build meaningful and predictable ways to facilitate faculty meetings that engage all participants, including incorporating time for them to build connections with one another and adding in playfulness at the right risk level that still feels safe and collaborative.

• Build self-awareness: do your language and actions convey trust in teachers, and align with the vision, values, and expectations of staff at your school?

Strategies for Building Trust as a Teacher with Students:

• Observe your students’ preferences for learning and honor those in planning, instruction, and room arrangement. For example, as children approach second or third grade, they may begin to prefer having opportunities to working alone rather than working in groups, so providing options and spaces for independent work lets them trust that you understand and are responsive to their needs (Yardsticks, 2018).

• Incorporate consistent, meaningful rituals and routines into the school day, week, and year.

• Make time for students to share about their families, cultures,  likes, dislikes, strengths, areas of growth, and share the same about yourself!

• Explicitly and proactively communicate classroom values, the expectations you have of your students that match those values, and what they can expect of you as their teacher.

• Explicitly teach skills students will use in the classroom that build trust (listening, collaborating, respectful language, etc.).

• Incorporate playfulness at the right risk and developmental levels into each day or class period, to encourage having fun and stretching for growth while feeling safe.

• Admit mistakes as learning opportunities, and model being a learner with a growth mindset.

• Co-create classroom norms and model routines, so all students feel that they’ve contributed to shared culture.

• Objectively observe student behavior as it matches your expectations, and be as consistent in your recognition of positive behavior as you are in redirecting off-task behavior.

• Respond to behavior mistakes consistently, firmly, and fairly while preserving the students’ dignity through your tone, language, and consequences.

• Build self-awareness: do your language and actions convey trust in students, and align with your classroom values and expectations?

Building Trust with Families & Community:

• Maintain clear, consistent, two-way channels of communication that encourage kind honesty and frequent feedback.

• Hold early conferences to build relationships and learn about each family.

• Explicitly and proactively communicate classroom values, the expectations you have of your students that match those values, and what families can expect of you as their child’s teacher.

• Routinely share positives about each student. 

• Truly listen to family concerns, and follow-up with actions that show you have addressed their concerns.

• Honor families culturally and recognize them as the experts on their child.

• Build self-awareness: do your language and actions convey trust in families, and align with your classroom values and expectations?

As we begin the 2021-22 school year, it’s critical that we remember that:

Academic success and prioritizing physical, mental, and emotional safety are not competing interests in classrooms and schools; they are deeply intertwined.

Once we are able to create a strong foundation of safety for our students, the faster and farther they will be able to succeed in school and life.  

References:

• Anderson, Mike. (2019). What We Say and How We Say it Matter. Alexandria: ASCD.

• Hammond, Zaretta. (2015). Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 

• Portugal, Nina and Tayabas-Kim, Malia. “Belonging, Safety, and Trust: A Recipe for Better Professional Learning.” Edutopia. 26, July, 2021. Belonging, Safety, and Trust: A Recipe for Better Professional Learning | Edutopia.

• Wood, Chip. (2018). Yardsticks. Turners Falls: Center for Responsive Schools, Inc.

• Zak, Paul J. “The Neuroscience of Trust: Management Behaviors that Foster Employee Engagement.” Harvard Business Review. Jan-Feb, 2017. The Neuroscience of Trust.

• Zak, Paul J. (2017). Trust Factor. The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies. New York, NY: AMACOM.