All teachers want their classrooms to be engines of learning where students feel inspired to focus, think, and participate and know that they are expected to perform. There are many ways to create this kind of high-performance learning environment, from changing the way your room looks to rethinking your class structure. Let’s look at a few ideas and options to get started.

Setting the Standard

How do you set a high standard for student performance? It starts with your own vision for each class, before the school year begins. When you imagine your ideal classes, what do you see—what would you like to see? Students going over peer edits in pairs? Small groups analyzing a text or image? Whole-class discussions with full participation? Discussions led by students instead of you? Once you know what you want to see, brainstorm ideas for making it happen. How can you structure your classes to allow for this kind of activity? It might mean shortening lectures or moving them offline by flipping your classroom, at least part of the time. Or it could mean creating a new routine that allows students to move from lecture to discussion to individual work more frequently. As the school year progresses, you can fine-tune your changes. Learn more about “Starting in September”.

Once you have a strategy and a goal, explain them clearly to your students. Most teachers hand out a set of rules for behavior at the beginning of the year that describe policies for homework, grading, attendance, etc. Add your expectations for student performance to that handout. What level of analysis do you expect in class discussions? How often do you expect them to lead a small group through an assignment? How often will you ask someone to engage you in a dialogue in front of the class? How many revisions will they be expected to do for major pieces of writing? These specific guidelines alert students to the level of performance you are expecting of them.

Staging the Room

In the elementary grades, there can be more flexibility to create open spaces and small group learning stations than in the middle and high school grades because there is more understanding that younger students need to move around and shift focus over the course of the school day. Since their students are in the same room for most of the day, elementary teachers have developed many clever ways to change up the scenery from morning to afternoon. Gathering in reading circles, moving through stations, and creating places for quiet, independent work are all part of this environment.

Observe the classrooms in these workshops to see examples of engaging learning environments:

• Social Studies in Action Workshop K-5, session 6, “Engaging Students in Active Learning”
• Teaching Reading K-2 Library
• Teaching Reading 3-5 Workshop
• Teaching Math K-4 Library
• Science in Focus: Shedding Light Workshop

But what about the older grades? Most middle and high school classrooms do not feature cozy rugs and library corners. Step into the average 8^th or 11^th-grade classroom and you still find rows of desks facing the front of the room. Students don’t move around the room, and their focus remains in one place for the duration of the class. Teachers who are in constant motion may see this as a positive, but it can be paralyzing for students. When the body checks out, the mind often follows, and the longer a student is not allowed to move or speak, the more likely it is that s/he will drift. Students fight this battle to keep their minds alert while their bodies remain static every day.

In the older grades, you can address this threat to high performance in a few ways. An easy place to start is the seating chart. It’s easy to seat students in pairs without having to restructure your whole classroom; once this is done, take a few short breaks during your lecture to allow the student pairs to share notes, ask questions, or complete a quick activity or solve a problem. When you resume your lecture, begin by asking a few pairs for their thoughts or solutions. Change the seating chart frequently so students end up working with everyone in the class at least once a term. In addition, work in opportunities for collaborative grouping and for independent study to allow introverts time to work alone.

Making Tactical Changes

Here are some quick ideas for ramping up student performance:

• Question the content. Why do we need to learn history? When will we ever use this math again? Why do we need to graph this data? Do regular reality checks on the subject at hand, and don’t provide the answers—guide students to find and describe real applications of and real meaning in the work they are doing. If that meaning is hard to find, challenge students to delve into the subject and find a purpose for it.
• Re-evaluate your routine. Is every part of your class structure working? For example, if you always have students do a quick problem before your lecture, and you answer the problem in your lecture, students may just skip solving the problem. That’s wasted time for you and for them. Consider shifting the activity from written to oral by asking students how they would solve the problem. Then incorporate their responses into your lecture.
• Create a space for vulnerability. This is hard. School is a public forum and many students don’t want to make themselves vulnerable by participating in class. It’s up to you to model vulnerability: be willing to say “I don’t know”, be willing to laugh at yourself, be willing to change your mind based on what you hear from your students. Be in real dialogue with your students—let them see that their ideas can impact your own. When you are willing to let students shine their own spotlight on you, they will be more willing to also step into it themselves.

Most important to high-performance is this golden rule: generate goodwill. If students see that you are consistently respectful and thoughtful, they will participate more readily and sign on to your vision. When students see that you are committed to increasing their performance, they will more readily share that commitment. Learn more about building student trust, no matter what subject you teach, by watching The Art of Teaching the Arts, workshop 5, “Creating Rich Learning Environments” and reading our blog post “Get Ready: Build a Learning Community.”

For more on creating a High-Performance Learning Environment, see The Learning Classroom: Theory into Practice for all K-12 teachers.