Dolphin Tales, CKH
Capturing Kids' Hearts Tools
Building Social Contracts
A Social Contract is an agreement of behavior for a group or community. Throughout the West Bloomfield School District, we build social contracts with our classroom communities. When building the social contract, we include student voice. When the students have a say in how they want people to treat each other, they take ownership on how the class runs and operates.
Throughout the past few weeks, our classrooms have worked on building their class Social Contract. Your child will be able to tell you all about it.
We encourage you to build a Social Contract at home. I have one that is hanging in our kitchen, and it is something that we go over all of the time as a reminder of how my family agreed to treat each other.
Here's how you build it:
- Discuss the following four questions with your entire family: How do you want to be treated by me (the parent)? How do you think I (the parent) want to be treated by you (the child)? How do we want to treat each other? How will we treat each other when we have a problem/conflict?
- The goal is to create a set of words/phrases that you can highlight for your social contract. For example, you might have words/phrases like "be kind," "thoughtful," "patient," and "positive" on your social contract.
- Once you have generated your words/phrases, you record them on a larger piece of paper and post it somewhere in your house.
- Everyone signs it or initials it to signal that they agree to these values.
Here's how you keep it alive:
- Take time throughout the day to review the Social Contract. Pick one or two words to be the focus for the family.
- Pick someone to rate how the family has done with those 1 or 2 words for the day.
- Take time to affirm/compliment your children for doing a great job with one of the words/phrases on the Social Contract. Make the compliment very specific.
- If someone in the family is having a hard time living up to the agreements, you can remind them of the behaviors they agreed upon.
- At dinner, in the car, or during a walk, ask your child how he/she did in school with one of the values on your Social Contract. Ask them how a staff member lived out one of the values from your Social Contract.
- Refer to the Social Contract as often as possible.
Feel free to share:
- If you get a chance to build a Social Contract with your family, feel free to email me pictures of the Social Contract with your child. We would love to include them in our next newsletter.
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