Neal Middle School is a Capturing Kids' Hearts (CKH) School- if you're not familiar with the program, it's a process that provides strategies and training to educators to address kids' social and emotional needs. If you'd like more information, check out their website here.
One important component of CKH is the social contract- a document meant to let everyone in the classroom know what behavior is acceptable and what is not. In a classroom setting, each class would design their own social contract. I knew it would be a challenge to incorporate this strategy into the library- after all, we serve all 800 or so students in the school! I decided to create a social contract based on the words I saw most frequently in the classroom social contracts around school, and have every student sign it to make a GIANT social contract just for the Media Center! (Shoutout to Coach Pyper for the awesome idea!)
You can see in the pictures below that our Social Contract consists of the following terms: Respect, Kindness, Responsibility, Patience, and Integrity. As each class visited the library for orientation, I asked them to sign our social contract, until more or less every class in school has signed it. In retrospect, I should have created two- 800 signatures is a lot for one poster! Nevertheless, I think it turned out great and I intend to hang it up in the Media Center where it can be seen by everyone. During Orientation, I discussed with students what the Media Center Social Contract means for them and for me as well. I refer back to it often while teaching or interacting with students. Check out the link at the beginning of this post if you'd like to know more about how Social Contracts can help create a self-managing classroom.
For now, I'm excited about using this tool (and many more) to establish a community of conscientious learners in the Neal Middle School Media Center.
