Community in the Classroom

In his article Community-Building In The Classroom: A Process, Nicholas Sacra Nevaire talks about the importance of building community in the classroom to help students be intrinsically motivated to learn and feel safe to take risks in their learning environment.  The author goes on a little political rant comparing American culture to that of an Aboriginal society to prove the benefits of community vs. individualism. Nicholas Sacra Nevaire goes on to give a definition of community and why he feels it is needed in the classroom.

What I took away from this article was that by cultivating community in the classroom teachers give their students a safe haven to experiment and learn from their mistakes.  A community classroom will also foster intrinsic motivation.  Both a safe environment to learn in and motivated students will decrease some of the anxiety that students feel.  I am a firm believer in the linguist Stephen Krashen’s theory on anxiety effecting students ability to learn in the classroom.  The Affective Filter Hypothesis (Stephen Krashen 1982) speculated that learners have a filter that affects their ability to learn.  If the student is anxious and not motivated when learning then they will have a high filter which will make it difficult for comprehensible input to reach the brain. If on the other hand the student is comfortable and motivated, then their filter will be low and they will learn.  This is a prime example why community is so important for students in the classroom.  The more comfortable they feel amongst their peers and teacher the better equipped they will be to learn.

I also liked how Nicholas experimented with allowing his students to only ask one question a day and having them rely on their fellow classmates for other answers.  I do not think the one question a day method would work in a composition class because I would want my students to critically think, but I do think it is a good idea to facilitate students in helping each other out with unanswered questions.  I think one of the best ways to learn is to teach what you know to someone else.  Students that do not fully understand will benefit from the help of the classmate that explains things to them and in turn the student explaining will learn from teaching what they know.

I also see the benefit of Nicholas’ suggestion of keeping students together for consecutive semesters.  This enables the community to get to truly develop over time and takes some pressure off of the instructor in having to reestablish a new community every semester.  I believe that our Composition for Multi-lingual Students program here at San Francisco State already practices this community-building idea in its English 201 to 202 track.  I think this is a great idea and I also like the idea of block courses where students can stay in the same groups in classes of similar disciplines.