Why Class Lists Don’t Matter (When You Work in a Learning Community)

Forever ago, I was one of the co-teachers in my oldest son's second grade classroom. My son, Xavier, was in one home base and I taught in the other. We had a strong team, two lead teachers and two assistants, working closely in a learning community model.

But of course, things are never neat when you're teaching your own child.

Xavier had a really challenging time with a classmate, Theo.* The two just couldn’t get along—on the playground, in group work, in shared spaces. And to make things even more complicated, Theo was on my class roster. I made a firm decision early on: “I’m Theo’s teacher. I have to be his advocate.” So I stepped away from anything to do with my own child’s behavior with Theo. Which meant, yes—you guessed it—my husband spent more than a few afternoons in the principal’s office.

When it came time to draft the third-grade class lists, one thing was unanimously agreed upon by our teaching team: Xavier and Theo should not be in the same home base. We had seen enough conflict and it seemed like the right decision to continue to give them space.

Fast forward to the first day of third grade… and guess who ended up together?

I freaked out... a little bit.

We had considered everything except what mattered most—growth. Over that summer, something had shifted. The boys matured, reset, and came back as different versions of themselves. But most importantly, their third-grade teacher created the conditions for a different kind of connection. Through Morning Meeting routines, she made space for students to share and discover each other in a way that they hadn't when they had been separated. Turns out, Xavier and Theo both loved the same video games, coded in Scratch, and had a soft spot for their Indonesian street dogs. Within a few weeks, they were fast friends.

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That experience was one of the biggest "aha" moments of my career in learning communities. As co-teachers the year before, we’d spent so much time separating them, giving them occasional chances to work together (that backfired)—but we had never taken the time to help them find what worked.

Their third-grade teacher had.

So it got me thinking: What happens when the “second-grade combativeness” shows up again? What if the issue isn’t between students—but between a student and a teacher? Why are we so hesitant, as educators, to say: “I may not be the right fit for this child,” or “This group isn’t the best space for this learner right now”?

Over the past several years, I’ve worked in international schools that have been dabbling in the learning community model. And every time I introduce the story of Xavier and Theo, it leads me to the same conversation: What if we didn’t start the year with fixed home bases?

What if, instead of using outdated class lists based on data from students we haven’t seen in three months, we used the first few weeks of school to really get to know our students? Let’s watch how they engage in purposeful play. Let’s observe how they collaborate during introductory challenges. Let’s build classroom culture across the entire learning community—and then make groupings based on the students in front of us. Not the children who left us in June.

When teachers work in a true learning community with a spirit of collective efficacy, flexibility becomes the norm. The class list becomes fluid. And students are seen not as problems to be sorted, but as people to be understood.

The story of these boys from 15 years ago reminds me that relationships evolve—and as teachers, we need to design environments that allow for that evolution. Because when we do, class lists stop mattering. Community starts mattering more.

*Theo's name has been changed