SWC #6: Essential Agreements

The Essential Agreements are explored in every IB workshop to set the intention of the expeirence.  They help to set the expectation of participants and workshop leader and hold them accountable. 

When doing this with young learners, it can sometimes be challenging. Here are questions that have frequently circled through my mind in response to essential agreements.

• How do we begin? 
• What is the intention? 
• How do we make it practical?  

I've reflected on the essential agreements used through the years.  The fan favorite is, "Treat others the way you want to be treated."  The problem with this one, there are so many variables of what this might look like based on personal experiences, cultural background, and school culture. 

In 2017, I had the priviledge of attending at a workshop with Kath Murdoch in Houston, Texas at the British School  In this one-day workshop, she spoke about the power of making essential agreements that were practical, in kid-friendly language, and short in number.  She encouraged participants to engage in an exercise of how to create more meaningful agreements.  

I went back to my classroom and immediately used it with my learners.  They listed all the agreements that were of interest to them.  I transcribed them onto individual sheets and had learners put stickers on every agreement that resonated with them, as pictured here. 

After voting on their favorite agreements, I gathered them together to identify the top five that were most preferred by my learners.  This allowed for more agency in the process, because they came up with the list and chose the ones that best fit their needs.  They were written in a way that was easy to undertand and follow. 

Since 2017, I have been using this model to create essential agreements with my learners, young and old.  ​Here is my current set in my classroom.  They might change based on the learning needs. 

In the past, I have used our essential agreements as a reflective thread.  Was ist das?  A reflective thread is a set of prompts that you ask over again.  The first time they answer it, they are trying to understand the prompt.  The subsequent times, they are learning how to manipulate the thread for the new learning situation.  I use my list of essential agreements as a reflective thread.  Here's how.

I ask my learners: 

• How have you showed friendship during our learning today?
• When were moments of fun for you?
• What is something new you learned today?  How has it changed your thinking?
• How were you kind to someone today?
• When did you use a quiet voice? 

I am still struggling to use this consistently, but something tells me I will work on it this week!  I know that the repeated practice will make the essential agreements part of the disposition of the class, rather than a list of rules to follow.  

Let me know how you make your essential agreements come to life.  I love to learn from others!