Establishing community agreement in the classroom is an excellent way to commence a semester and cultivate a culture of mutual care and respect within the seminars. Developing a community agreement is not exclusive to in-person classes; and online synchronous and asynchronous classes can also benefit from it.

In this chapter you will learn about:

1. Creating collaborative community agreement
2. Setting ground rules and its importance in the seminars
3. Examples of ground rules

Establishing Community Agreement

Community Agreement is a shared agreement between learners and TA about how ways in which they work together over the course of their time together. This can include guidelines for what it means to be respectful, expectations about turn-taking, or group work, etc.

When discussing ground rules, it is important to involve your students’ voices in the discussion. This approach establishes an inclusive classroom atmosphere where students’ opinions hold significance and are valued. We should have in mind that each student is bringing in different lived experiences to the classroom and have different idea of respect and care. Creating a collective community agreement by brainstorming a list of rules with the students results in everyone taking ownership of the tone of the seminars or labs.

Some questions to ask might be:

• How can the seminar/lecture/lab be a safe environment for you where you feel safe to share your personal, political, critical, etc. beliefs?
• What should our principles of respect and care be?
• What are our responsibilities when it comes to group work?
• What are the things we need to ask consent for in a classroom?
• What processes should we have in place for when someone (including the instructor/TA/facilitator) says something that is hurtful to someone else?
• Is there anything you would like your instructor/TA to know about you?

In the process, you might touch on principles of responsibility, respect, care, openness, right to pass, acceptance, etc.

Start the conversation in the first session of your class but let it be the spark of an ongoing conversation throughout the semester. To further stimulate discussion and get students to engage in this process, ask them to dig deeper by asking them what respect feels like.

You can create a document that you all share together and can add and remove items from it. Make sure you provide multiple ways of engagement and contribution. Some students might not be comfortable sharing their thoughts in an in-person seminar or a chat box in an online learning environment. Sometimes anonymity gives individuals more freedom to express themselves. You can create an additional online form and send it to students without requiring their names.

Remember that this is only a start. Discuss your own suggestions according to your teaching philosophy, the type of class, and the subject. Make the community agreements a living document and refer to it, update it, and modify it throughout the semester as needed.

Setting ground Rules

There might be a need for setting some ground rules when instructing in a classroom that requires more rigorous structure and boundaries. Setting ground rules also demonstrates to the students how everyone is expected to interact with one another and allows the students the opportunity to be involved in outlining how their class will operate for the semester. These ground rules will hold the students accountable to you and one another. You may ask the professor about rules specific to the setting you are working in i.e., no food in wet and dry labs.

Some examples of ground rules you may wish to establish in your class include:

• Everyone is expected to participate but they can do so in their own way.
• No one will be judged by disability, gender, sexuality, race, or religion and everyone is equally respected.
• No one will ever be harassed in any way.
• Every student has the right to ask questions.
• TA must answer questions without judgment.