Community Agreements
Discussions and topics centered around race and racism can be challenging and uncomfortable for students. For this reason, it’s important to ensure that participants are clear on the norms and expectations for collaborative discussions. Participants should have an active role in creating the norms to which everyone should be held during the discussion. When norms are co-created, all participants can take ownership in holding each other accountable and refer to the norms and community agreement as needed during the discussion.
Some examples of norms and expectations are as follows:
There are many ways to begin creating community agreements including:
Whole group discussion:
Have students call out agreement ideas as the teacher writes them on the board. As a group, everyone votes on their top 5-10 agreements they feel are the most equitable.
Small group work:
Have students work in pairs to draft five community agreements. After each pair has five agreements, have them join with another pair (four people total) to share their agreements and vote on a top five. Repeat this process once more to create groups of eight. After this, have each group of eight share their agreements to the class while the teacher writes them on the board. As a class, vote on the top 5-10 agreements to keep.
Activity
Learn more about creating community agreements
and the importance of involving participants.
Review Agreements
On the day of discussions, set aside some designated time for your class to discuss the agreed upon norms and expectations before beginning the discussion. Writing the agreement, norms, and/or expectations on chart paper and posting for reference will help to ensure all participants can refer to them during discussion, if needed.