Picking up on yesterday’s question, which focused on how culture can support reading, I thought it important to back-up and ask what the culture can and cannot do. I’m sensitive to this because most of us have had the experience of a leader asking the group to take on a problem or a task when the issue is about one person or a small group of people. Teachers do this all the time; yapping about lateness with the kids who are all on-time?

So I asked the question by having each student make a list of what’s fair and what’s unfair to ask of the whole culture.

Fair to expect the whole culture to support:
giving everyone a chance
everyone express their own opinion
addressing something that everybody can change (AM)
to call people out in fornt of class when they are slacking (AM)
to help one another (AM)
the whole class being involved (BC)
to tell someone when they’re doing wrong (DD)
bringing important things to the bigger group to talk it out (DD)
everyone should crack a joke once or twice a week (SH)
coming prepared to school (KH)
having people support you and your work (LS)
to make sure everyone is upadated on their work (MT)

Unfair when:
tell the class that a person is failing
people get picked on when they are having a hard time (AM)
everyone comes at one person about something that happened (BC)
calling someone out at the wrong time (BC)
people give their thoughts on things that have nothing to do with you. (BC)
having important discussions without everyone
to have to clean up after others (DD)
to lose things because of others (DD)
someone has done what they’re supposed to do but have to do more because someone is absent (IP)
the sins of the one fall on the many (EG) make everyone suffer for one person’s mistake (SH)
calling someone out in a disrespectful way (EG)
people do half a** work and expect a good grade (SH)
calling someone out on a grade they wanted to keep private (KH)
saying something that will make the environment feel unsafe (KH)
reading someone else’s work without them knowing (HG)

Debatable
Grinding people up when they leave the classroom (SH)

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What I’m thinking about is how I can get out of the way of some of these things. In other words, how do I help students do this culture work as much as I can, without placing them in unfair positions? There are some behaviors that I have to monitor for the sake of the school and some behaviors and work patterns that occur because of the blind spots all humans have, i.e., things take longer than you think they will.

The other piece that needs to happen with this conversation is how much of this work can fall on students (as much as possible) and where should it fall on the teacher. The fact that the students have accepted so much of the responsibility is tribute to how awesome they are but it’s