The High-Trust Classroom

Raising Achievement from the Inside Out

Lonnie Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317444947
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Classroom Management

Create a classroom environment where students trust their teacher—and one another! In the second edition of this bestseller, co-published by Routledge and Franklin Covey, you'll learn how to establish the 25 qualities of the high-trust classroom. All change begins with self-awareness, and this book will help you identify the things that you can do personally and professionally to build trust and engage the learner. You'll learn how to:

• Manage your emotions to promote a calm, safe, and welcoming classroom environment;

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• Plan effective lessons by setting measurable goals for your students and helping them achieve to their fullest potential;

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• Communicate clearly with your students to build trust and convey expectations with a positive attitude;

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• Become an inspirational and motivating figure in your students' lives;

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• And much, much more!

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This updated edition includes a new section on scoreboarding – visually tracking daily or weekly progress to help drive personal and professional growth – as well as a section on getting students to take ownership of their learning. Whether you are a new or veteran teacher, this book will help you develop a personal growth plan to create a classroom in which all students feel valued, motivated, and inspired.

1

The High-Trust Classroom

What Is the High-Trust Classroom?

The term “high-trust” is not exclusive to classrooms. We could equally discuss high-trust in the context of a sports team, a marriage, your school’s science department, or school-wide trust between administration and faculty. Although many of the principles presented in this book have a broader application, the focus of this book is the classroom.

The high-trust classroom is a place

where students look forward to class;

where students feel safe;

where students sense the relevance of the learning;

with few discipline problems;

where students are intrinsically motivated;

with effective cooperative group learning;

where the teacher can confidently use creative lesson planning; and

where the teacher enjoys his or her career and experiences minimal negative stress.

These outcomes are not only possible, but are probably being achieved by teachers in your school today, perhaps the teacher down the hall. If you are not achieving the same level of success as your colleagues, you must ask yourself, “What are they doing differently?”

Chances are they have created the high-trust classroom.

Why Should I Become a High-Trust Teacher?

You should become a high-trust teacher because—trust works!

As Dr. Robert J. Marzano (2003) mentions in his book What Works in Schools, trust is the “apparent key” to effective mentoring relationships. Whether formally or informally, all teachers are mentors.

Trust is the hidden variable that makes everything else work. With trust, your classroom will operate more efficiently. With trust, your interactions with other teachers, administrators, and parents will be more creative and meaningful. This is the key to improving student achievement, reducing stress, and attaining career longevity.

Have you ever spent hours and hours developing the perfect lesson plan, only to have the lesson ruined because of “social challenges” in the classroom? Of course, we all have felt this frustration.

High trust is not going to eliminate all of your “classroom management” challenges. However, it will eliminate more than low trust. With increased teacher-student trust comes decreased behavioral issues. Have you ever noticed that some teachers write a couple of disciplinary referrals per day and others may write only a couple per year? Why? Are they too lenient and let students walk all over them? Well, perhaps. Some teachers do not hold students accountable for their choices. But there is another group of teachers who rarely write referrals. These are the elite teachers who create high-trust relationships, which lead to high-trust learning environments. In these classrooms, students choose to learn, not to misbehave. They choose to produce quality work, not look for quick-fix shortcuts. The difference is intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, motivation to learn.

High-trust relationships contribute to a decrease in bullying. In the book Bullying: The Bullies, the Victims, the Bystanders (2003), Sandra Harris and Garth F. Petrie say, “Building trusting relationships with adults is an important component in the effort to reduce bullying” (p. 83).

Perhaps the most important reason to become a high-trust teacher is to meet the unique and diverse needs of today’s generation of learners. What worked 50, 30, or 20 years ago will not work in most schools today. Our societal pains consistently surface in our classrooms. Far too many children grow up in low-trust home environments. From poor modeling to outright criminal behavior, many of our students have never experienced high-trust relationships. Imagine the potentially life-changing impact of your high-trust classroom on this student.

Why Some Teachers Do Not Develop a High-Trust Classroom

If trust is everything, why doesn’t every teacher create a high-trust classroom?

There are many reasons. Perhaps teachers have been “beaten up” or “worn down” by the system. Other reasons could include ego, fatigue, or health issues. Thus, they have given in to a life of day-to-day survival and extrinsic measures to “control” their students. Having worked in hundreds of schools, I’ve seen an alarmingly high number of teachers who fall into this category.

Perhaps the main reason more teachers do not create high-trust classrooms has less to do with factors within the school, and more to do with the character and skill set of the teacher. Perhaps they have never developed important trust-building skills such as empathy and effective listening. Although the teacher may be excellent in their subject area, their inability to build trust with students may be limiting their long-term effectiveness as an educator.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that there is a direct correlation between relationship struggles at school and personal relationship struggles. It is very difficult to separate a high-stress personal life from one’s professional life. A person cannot just “flip a switch” when pulling into the school parking lot. Over time, personal challenges will begin to surface professionally. Children and teens are extremely perceptive. As teachers, we reveal ourselves to our students every day. You can’t fake it; they will figure you out!

We don’t have ineffective teachers in the classroom; however, we do have ineffective people in life who have become teachers.

The Trust Tax versus the Trust Dividend

In Stephen M. R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust (2006), he describes the trust tax. The trust tax is the cost we pay for working in a low-trust culture. Within education, a low-trust tax could be student misbehavior. The cost of misbehavior could be increased stress, decreased learning, dreading going to work, burnout, or counting the days to the next holiday. Conversely, the dividend of a high-trust classroom could be less stress, increased learning, and looking forward to going to work.

Covey also discusses the time it takes to accomplish specific tasks in both the low-trust and high-trust cultures. For example, in the high-trust classroom, the teacher can give the assignment and allow the students the freedom to work independently. From collecting homework to cooperative group learning, things move quickly in the high-trust classroom. Conversely, things move slowly in the low-trust classroom. Just taking attendance can take forever in this environment.

In the Absence of High Trust

When teachers do not build trust, they are forced to use extrinsic measures to keep control within the classroom. For some teachers, the extrinsic measure could be fear! In other words, they scare students into following the rules. Others may use carrot-and-stick techniques, such as “pulling a ticket” or writing a student’s name on the board. While these techniques may be effective in the lower grades, these outside-in techniques do not always work as well with older students. Although “token economy” techniques may be necessary in some settings, the mainstream population of students must be motivated from the inside out.

For most teachers reading this book, inside-out motivation is certainly the goal. However, there are still teachers who enter the profession with a different mind-set. Consider the comments from this teacher:

I’m a retired electrical engineer. I recently began working as a substitute teacher. My biggest challenge is to keep the noise level down and the smart alecks from disrupting the class. Things have sure changed since I went to school.

I have approached this challenge by being strict. Smart alecks, mainly 12-year-old boys, end up standing facing the wall until they apologize for disrupting the class.

This approach to classroom management is a lose-lose situation on many levels.

The Greatest Obstacle to the High-Trust Classroom

The greatest obstacle to the high-trust classroom is often the mind-set of the teacher. However, some might believe the greatest obstacle to building trust is the defiant student. Yes, defiance is a problem in many schools, but the outdated paradigms on behalf of the teacher could be the greatest obstacle of all. High-trust teachers can prevent the emotional fires of defiance and redirect student energy toward successful endeavors. Many say this is just utopian thinking, but high-trust teachers know this is possible.

In the high-trust classroom, the teacher is trusted because of his or her

character

reputation

fairness

preparation

subject matter expertise

approachability

Students respect this teacher’s content knowledge, professionalism, and ability to relate to them on an individual level. Students genuinely sense that the teacher cares about their academic and emotional growth.

Expected Outcomes of the High-Trust Classroom

Benefits of the high-trust classroom can be found all around you. Just look at your colleagues who consistently demonstrate a high level of success. Consider movies such as Lean on Me (Schiffer, 19...