#  Building Trust in the Classroom 

 



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Building trust creates an open classroom where students are welcomed, valued, and heard. And a classroom that has trust and community can be more resilient when disagreement and conflict arises. Research studies demonstrate that students’ connection with one another improves their academic performance and overall well-being.

Below are some ideas for how to build trust in the classroom:

- **Use Icebreakers Unrelated to Course Material**: Starting class with a short discussion that has nothing to do with course material allows students to get to know one another. These brief activities allow students to talk without any pressure to be right or perform smartness. It encourages quieter students to practice talking. It also introduces parts of students’ lives that they don’t typically share in class. Above all, it normalizes contributing thoughts to classroom discussion.
    - **Question roll**: Ask for 6 volunteers (or whatever number makes sense in your class) to write an answer to the Question of the Day on the board. Questions should be low-stakes: “what is the best / worst dining hall food?,” “what is the best pizza in Cambridge?,” etc.1
    - **Low-Stakes Debate**: This activity gives students the opportunity to practice disagreeing with each other. Ask a question that imposes a debate about a low-stakes topic unrelated to class: “Coffee vs. Tea,” “Harvard. Vs. Yale,” “Train vs. Plane,” etc.
- **Use Icebreakers Related to Course Content:** Short discussions at the beginning of class offer students a low-stakes approach to course material. For example, ask students to take an opinion on something related to course content, but on something larger / more philosophical than any given class would be: “Do you prefer novels or poetry and why?” (in a course with literary sources), etc.
- **Encourage Your Students to Get to Know One Another:** Working in smaller groups helps students become more comfortable talking with their peers and enables more participation in larger class-wide discussions. Examples of techniques you can use include think-pair-share, role playing, simulation, a low-stakes debate, collaborative annotation, collaborative concept mapping, or collaborative board work.
- **Highlight Classroom Norms**: Establishing [classroom norms](/classroom-norms "Classroom Norms") at the beginning of the semester enables students and instructors to know what to expect and what is expected in class. Throughout the semester, remind students about particular classroom norms to recenter the group on shared expectations and goals.
- **Foster Vulnerability:** Encourage students to be vulnerable with one another by giving them structured opportunities to discuss vulnerable topics (whether or not related to course material). Example questions include “when did you make a mistake in class,” “how did you mess up an assignment,” or “did you ever say anything you regretted in class?” You can also model vulnerability to your students, for example by sharing what was difficult for you to grasp the first time you worked with one of the course’s concepts, problems, or materials.

1 David Gooblar, *The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You About College Teaching* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 120.