ABSTRACT
How do you build classroom communities committed to educational goals? It takes time, attention to broad goals, and concern with the details of daily living. In Chapter 4, I discussed experiences at Camp Hurley that helped me understand the importance of relationships between students and teachers, and their impact on young people. One of the things I learned as a counselor and young teacher is that communities always exist, but they do not always include the people in nominal authority (teachers) or a commitment to the goals of dominant institutions (educational achievement). When a group or class appears chaotic, it is often because adolescents have coalesced around their own agenda and leadership, like the group that ran away to see what the rain was doing to their drainage ditch. The struggle for teachers is not just to build classroom communities, but to build communities committed to educational achievement. I believe this requires the creation of democratic communities with student leaders and community members who feel they are part of the decision-making process.
