Establish and maintain clear goals, roles, expectations, and behavioral norms at the very beginning.

As a leader of your group, you have the most influence over creating a culture of safety within your group. By far, the most leverage you have is at the beginning of your class/trip. All of your group’s future endeavors are made easier or more challenging by the effectiveness of these first interactions. Two important meetings should occur at this early stage:

• Meet with your leader team prior to the beginning of your class/trip to discuss your leadership roles as well as personal and course objectives.
  • See Sample Pre-trip Leader team meeting agenda below
• Facilitate an orientation meeting with your whole group as early as possible to establish clear goals, roles, expectations, and behavioral norms.
  • See Sample Orientation Meeting Agenda below
  • See Establishing Appropriate Behavioral Norms below
  • See more on Alcohol and Drugs below

A Sample Pre-trip Leader Team Meeting Agenda

Before any trip, make time for a discussion with your leader team to plan, organize, and team-build.  Consider including the following during a pre-trip meeting:

• Take time for everyone to briefly introduce themselves to each other
• Discuss strengths and weaknesses. What support do your co-leaders need?
• Discuss (and even write down) everyone’s personal and professional goals. What are your goals as a leader team? Incorporate any feedback received from previous courses or trips.
• How will you communicate as an instructor team? Will you check-in at least once a day? every few days?
• Be open to giving and receiving feedback: how, when, being timely, tactful, and honest. Start giving each other feedback now. How will you resolve conflict should it come up?
• Plan out the first few days of the course, including the Student Orientation Meeting
• Delegate logistical and curricular tasks.
• What are the anticipated challenges and hazards of this class/trip? What are your plans in case of an emergency?

A Sample Orientation Meeting Agenda (with notes on appropriate behavioral norms, and drugs/alcohol)

In the beginning of a class or research trip, make time for an orientation meeting that sets clear goals, responsibilities of teachers and students, and expectations for appropriate/safe behavior.  This meeting might be very short or you may need to follow up with further discussions in the beginning of a trip. In any case, it is still vital to establish a clear base line at the beginning that you can return to if someone is not meeting your expectations.

Here is a sample agenda to follow:

• Introduction
  • Welcome! Be enthusiastic and really be welcoming.
  • Give a brief overview of what you’re going to cover at the meeting
  • Do a name game or some other activity to build connections/ have fun
  • Introduce leader team members (who you are and your background)
  • Introduction of participants (who are you? why are you here? What’s your background/interests?)
• Logistics
  • Paint a brief picture of the course in order to build understanding and excitement
  • Where you are going (show maps etc.)?
  • What is this course all about (consider going over syllabus)
  • What will we be doing on the course (talk about typical day)
  • Share the flow of the trip. Go over a calendar or schedule
• Goals
  • Goals of the trip (leader perspective)
  • Participant goals: you might want to take some time to have students share some of their own personal goals.  This might also be appropriate later on in the course.
• Roles and Expectations (see separate page on Establishing Behavioral Norms)
  • Roles of the leaders (what the students can expect from the instructors).
  • Expectations (what the leaders expect from the students)
  • Specific issues to address (alcohol and drugs, emotional safety, sexual harassment, etc.)
• Closing Activities
  • Next steps; give the “to do” list and when and where we will meet next
  • Make time for questions
  • Final fun teambuilding activity. Maybe its just sharing an inspiring quote or doing something more involved such as a group brainstorm about how to build a group culture that support everyone in having an amazing experience.

Establishing Appropriate Behavioral Norms AKA a Safe Learning Environment

The following is a suggested format and prose you could use for a discussion about creating a safe learning environment for undergraduates participating in a multi-day field class.  This discussion should happen as early on in the course as possible. This can easily be modified or shortened for less-involved field experiences. Regardless, this discussion is one of the key leverage points that leaders have over the general trajectory that their group will follow during their time together. Don’t skip it.

• Introduction: Living and studying outside will pose significant challenges for all of us.  A big part of this challenge is how we work together as a group – how we communicate, cooperate, problem-solve, and support one another.  This course is different (and much more) than a regular academic experience - we learn together but we also live together and can’t get away from each other when we’re in the field. We have the responsibility both before and during the course to co-create a safe, positive learning environment. The rewards of building and maintaining a safe, supportive community are huge. Your own learning goals will be magnified when we actively work to support each other.
• Explicitly State Leader Expectations: With this in mind, it is important to specify and build consensus around what it takes to maintain a safe positive learning environment. Let’s spend time now as a group discussing this and getting everyone’s input. For now, consider the following general aspects that we as the leaders of this course have found useful in creating a safe positive learning environment:
  • You can expect us (your leaders) to instruct this course! But you can also expect us to respect you for who you are, to support you both physically and emotionally, to give and receive constructive feedback, and ultimately to provide a safe learning environment for you and the group as a whole.
  • We will expect all of you:
    • to respect one another
    • to practice proactive self-care; check in with us about medical concerns and other concerns you may have
    • to follow our lead & follow the rules - which we’ll discuss more in a moment
    • to participate fully (be on time, get out of bed!, speak up in discussions, take part in activities)
    • to teach and learn from one another (take pride in what you bring to the group and support others in what they bring too.)
    • to be open minded and ready to learn (all the time, even when you’re tired, when you’re in the van, when we’re at one of those fun spots, in the evening)
    • to take initiative to try new things (peer leadership)
    • to work together as a team (you don’t have to love everyone, but you do have to work together effectively. Sometime this means taking a leadership role, sometimes it means supporting one of your peers who takes a leadership role.)
    • to be willing to sacrifice some personal goals for the sake of the group (you may need to speed up/slow down, turn around on a hike, speak up more, listen more, modify your level of sarcasm/joking to fit with the norms of the group, etc.)
    • to give and receive constructive feedback
    • to provide a safe learning environment for everyone.
    • to, as the Hokey Pokey tells us, ‘put your whole self in’ to the experience
• Get input from your group: Take a some time to discuss in smaller groups anything else the student group thinks is important to maintaining a safe learning environment.  Then discuss as a whole group, letting as many participants share what they talked about. Acknowledge everyone for listening and sharing. Wrap this up by saying something about being inspired by your peers: for instance, you might say, “We all bring unique gifts to this group and our experience. Be inspired by these gifts, not intimidated.”
• Explicitly go over the important rules. Here are some common rules/issues that you might consider specifically addressing.  
  • Personal physical safety- no hiking alone, no rock-climbing, swimming guidelines, etc. You must wear your seatbelt in the van whenever we’re driving. See Competency section for more detail on many of these guidelines. You don't have time to discuss all of these right at the beginning, but introducing them right at the beginning lets your group know that you think they’re important. You can say that you will come to these in more detail once out in the field.
  • Emotional safety
    • Sexual harassment: Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general. The university tolerates zero harassment and as employees, and we are mandated reporters.
    • Avoid jokes, sarcasm, or insulting remarks: about individuals or groups of people, whether or not they are represented on this course
    • Aggression: Avoid either verbal threats or motion to harm others in the present or future
    • Language: keep the course relatively free of bad language
  • Alcohol and other Drugs This can clearly be a difficult “rule” to establish. Consider bringing up four things with the students: safety, legality, learning, and group cohesion.  
    • Safety: Clearly drugs and alcohol can compromise safety, which is especially concerning in remote field contexts.  
    • Legality: Drugs are illegal and using alcohol if you’re under 21 is illegal. Getting caught condoning illegal activities in a university-sponsored field class could cost any leader their job as well as jeopardize the future of the course.
    • Learning: Drugs and alcohol can interfere with your ability to learn the material we cover in this course.
    • Group cohesion: The use of drugs and alcohol can often undermine community building within a group. Often, a smaller subset of a group is most comfortable drinking (or perhaps sneaking off and using drugs) and this leads to cliques and dis-unity.
    • After going over these concerns, you might consider two different rules to establish and maintain:
      • No use of drugs or alcohol.
      • Moderate consumption of alcohol only by those of age and only “outside of class time”. By moderate is meant no hard alcohol, only beer/wine, and only 1 or 2 glasses at any one sitting. By “outside of class time” is meant after dinner if no other classes are planned in the evening.
    • Consequences: What if they break the rules? Consider saying something like this: “While I am not the police (and have no intentions to bust you), I am ultimately responsible for maintaining a safe learning environment for everyone out here. If your actions aren’t supporting that ultimate goal, I will request that you change your behavior.  I can also separate you from this course.”  
    • Don’t be afraid to assert yourself if you have opinions about this issue.  I have often been known to say things like:
      • “Please don’t think you can hide your marijuana joint from me and the other leaders. We’re living together all the time. Please be respectful of us and don’t put us in the position of having to confront you about it.”
      • “I refuse to spend the next ten weeks hanging out with a bunch of drunk people. I had to turn down many students who wanted to enroll in this course.  It is a privilege to be out here, so please don’t squander the opportunity that this experience presents.”
      • “Using alcohol in moderation is a vital skill/discipline to develop as a young adult. If I see you going too far, I will be happy to confront you on it.”
    • Final advice: If you set and maintain clear expectations, constantly build rapport and connection with your students, facilitate awesome experiences (without drugs/alcohol), and set a good example yourself, you won’t have trouble with this issue.
  • Smoking: follow the law/rules (ie. no smoking on the UCSC campus); in a place where smoking is permissible, smoke outside away from others and throw your butts away (they are not biodegradable). Consider quitting now.
  • Exclusive relationships (including romantic ones) - You might say, “get out of your bubble and be inclusive of everyone; it takes explicit deliberate action to be inclusive of everyone - make it a goal to sit some place different tomorrow, strike up a conversation with someone else; the whole experience will be much more meaningful if we come together as a whole group. Also, please refrain from sexual intimacy with someone else until our time off in between trips.”
  • Cell phones - “Either put your cell phone in airplane mode or turn it off completely during the day. If there are some apps you’re using for class that’s fine. If you want to make brief phone calls outside of our class time (like after dinner), that’s fine.  What we want to avoid is checking out of the present moment and not interacting with the people who are physically present.”
  • Music - no boomboxes; music in the van is at the driver’s discretion (all passengers must support the driver).  Beware listening too much to music using earbuds: it can lead to checking out too much from the group.
• Removing someone from the course: you might want to give an example of the rare occurrence where someone might separate from the course.  Consider saying:
  • If something inappropriate comes up about someone, we will first and foremost talk with that person or people involved.
  • Our goal would be to build understanding, provide additional support and clarification to everyone involved.
  • However, if the inappropriate behavior continues, we could decide to separate a person from the course.
• Finally, explicitly ask for everyone to follow these guidelines in order to create a safe learning environment.  You might say, “Does all this sound good? Can I get a yes or a nod from everyone?  If any of this concerns you, please feel free to come to talk with one or all of us after this meeting.”