Run It

A classroom charter takes one period and no technology beyond a sheet of paper. Here is the shape.

1 · Ask how they want to feel

Open with the real question: “How do we want this room to feel?” Gather their words — safe, respected, focused, included. These are the target, in the class’s own language, not yours.

2 · Ask what will get them there

“What will we actually DO to feel that way?” Keep it small and concrete — listen without interrupting, make room for quiet voices, keep a disagreement about the idea not the person. Ours, not a rules list from above.

3 · Write the repair — the load-bearing part

The question most rooms never answer until it is too late: “What will we do WHEN WE DON’T?” Agree a calm reset now, while everyone is calm — a breath and a beat, naming the slip kindly, repairing one-to-one after. A reset, never a punishment. This is the part that makes a charter work.

4 · Sign it and keep it in the room

Print the charter, sign it together, and post it. Revisit it when the room slips — not as a gotcha, but as “this is what we agreed.” The signed sheet is the whole record.

Honest about the evidence

Building a classroom charter is the lowest-tech, best-evidenced part of the RULER approach: the studies behind RULER are strongest on classroom CLIMATE — warmth, connectedness, how a room feels to be in — and were largely run by its developers. So the honest claim is that a co-built charter improves the climate of a room, not that it is a proven mental-health outcome. It is cheap, it is quick, and it collects nothing. That is enough reason to do it.

ClassPact keeps no student data, has no dashboard, and does no screening. It helps you run the activity; the class owns the result.