xSELeratED: The October Renorm - Reset the Culture Without Restarting the Year

Walter McKenzie
Oct 15
7 min read

Updated: Oct 15

This piece is from the new SEL initiative on The Worthy Educator, xSELeratED, led by Leigh Alley, Heather Lageman and Walter McKenzie.

By October, classrooms show signs that they need some...recalibration.

Transitions stretch by a minute here, a minute there. Directions echo more than they land. Routines practiced time and again are suddenly forgotten. No single moment is a crisis but, together, they nibble at the day. The norms and the culture we built in September need attention.

What are our choices? One path holds a hard pivot - tighten the screws, make a speech, write a policy in bold. Another holds the soft shrug - this is just how October goes; we’ll muscle through. Neither path keeps dignity intact and protects minutes. There is a third and it’s the one we choose in xSELeratED - renorm.

Renorming sounds like it could be a heavy lift, but it can be really simple and humane if we let it: re-state what we value, re-teach how we live it, and return to learning. That’s it. Renorming is not a good scolding and it’s not a reboot. It’s a course correction grounded in two of our xSELeratED Schools competencies:

Nurturing Others asks us to create safety, trust, and belonging with consistent expectations, dignified feedback, and repair after harm.
Understanding Myself asks us to notice our own energy and triggers so we act on purpose, not impulse. Renorming keeps both in view: we hold the line and the heart.

For those who listen closely, renorming begins before we say anything. It starts when we decide to be predictable again.

Calling "Time-In"

First, we call time-in - not with a lecture, but with a calm observation: “I’m noticing that our transitions have drifted from about a minute to nearly three. That’s two minutes fewer for labs and discussions. Let’s reset so our important work gets the time it deserves.” The room exhales; the why is clear. Instead of stacking consequences, we rebuild a shared picture of what a “good” transition looks like. We give one sentence for the routine - “Signal, freeze, eyes up, hands empty.” You show it. They try it. You time it, not to police them, but to make the improvement visible. Numbers are mercifully impersonal: “That was 58 seconds. We just earned back 44!”

Of course, we also need a plan for the near-misses and the real misses. Here’s where many teachers might feel the old pull toward ultimatum or debate. But renorming offers a third move: repair as routine. We post a tiny repair menu where eyes can land - return two minutes later today, assist a peer task, or contribute a class help - and we practice it once, quickly.

Miss > name the impact > choose a fix > rejoin

No spotlight, no lecture. The routine is boring by design. It protects dignity and momentum at the same time.

None of this requires a new program, and it definitely doesn’t beg a big block of time. We can thread renorming through the day like stitching: a clear line here, a quick demo there, a quiet repair when a seam pulls. What matters is steadiness. October isn’t asking for a brand-new you or them; it’s asking for the same cast of characters, showing up more consistently.

Leaning into narrative for a moment: picture your own tone shifting as you renorm. The first day, you might feel a little stiff, like you’re reading from a script. That’s fine. Predictability is mercy, especially when our energy dips. A posted sentence helps your future self. You will use the same words tomorrow and the next day, and you will hear them echoed back in student behavior: eyes up a beat quicker, hands empty without prompting, two peers choosing repair and rejoining the moment after. The culture creeps back toward clarity not because you got louder, but because you got simpler and clearer.

The positive effects of renorming travel well beyond our classrooms. When teams are using the same language, students don’t have to re-learn adult expectations every time they enter into a new space or context. Leaders can make this easy without making it heavy. A seven-minute stand-up in the workroom - one success, one norm to tighten, one student celebration - aligns the tone more than an hour-long slide deck ever will. Practicing the adult line out loud feels awkward for about 30 seconds and then becomes muscle memory: “Because learning time matters, here’s what happens next...” The cadence itself does some of the regulating.

Families, too, can be brought into renorming. A three-line note - what we’re resetting, what it could look like at home, and how we repair - keeps communication specific and neutral. No one needs a novel about hall passes; they need to know the shape of the expectation and the shape of the fix. When we keep the story short, families can repeat it and reinforce it, and families want to be our partner in the work.

Perhaps the quietest gift of renorming is what it does for our xSELeratED Schools competency Understanding Myself. October can blur our boundaries and our kindness in equal measure; again, we are prone either to over-correct or under-respond. Renorming asks us to prepare lines we can believe in when we’re tired. We tape them by the door or keep them in a plan book. We use them verbatim. We catch ourselves before the lecture, before the sigh, before the sarcasm. We trade improvisation for intention and, in doing so, we trade exhaustion for steadiness.

You’ll notice something else as you go: students respond to our steadiness with their own. They don’t need novelty every day. They need the next right cue, said the same way, pointing to the same routine, anchored to the same familiar purpose. When they miss - and they will - the repair is swift and beautifully ordinary. When they meet the moment - and they will - the praise is narrative, tied to observable moves: “You froze on the signal in three seconds; the directions landed clean.” We praise what is repeatable. We teach the culture through the way we name it.

Clarity. Consistency. Care.

If you want a simple way to keep yourself honest, borrow this tiny mental checklist before you renorm: Clarity, Consistency, Care. Is your sentence for the routine crisp enough to fit on a sticky note? Will you say the same line every time, even on a Friday after lunch? Is your repair path visible and practiced? If any of those wobble, shore them up first. Renorming collapses under fuzzy lines.

What do you renorm first? Two things, not ten. Pick the highest-leverage routines for your context - the way we enter and settle, the attention signal, the expectations for devices, the end-of-block wrap - and leave the rest alone until those hold. Depth beats breadth here. The goal is not “covering” norms; it’s living them again.

Let’s pause on the topic of tone, because tone is everything.

Renorming is not a performance. It’s not about catching, calling out, or collecting. It’s about practice - your practice and your learners’. That’s why timed transitions can feel surprisingly joyful; you’re not timing to judge but to show growth. When you shave 40 seconds off a transition and say out loud what you’ll do with those seconds, students understand the exchange: clearer habits buy more learning or recess or lunchtime. The routines of our day are important. We don’t let the important moments given to us go to waste.

And then you close the loop, lightly. You share a tiny trend with your class and maybe with your team: transition time down, on-time starts up, more corrections ending in repair rather than removal. You don’t need a dashboard; a sentence will do. “We earned back four minutes today; that’s why we finished the lab.” The story you’re telling is a story of competence - yours and theirs.

October can tempt us into believing culture is either soft or strict. Renorming refuses the false choice. It is softness with structure. It’s the trusted adult saying, I will be reliable so you can be brave. It’s the classroom rediscovering its rhythm - not because we clamped down or gave up, but because we chose to practice, together, what we’ve already said and shown that we value.

You don’t need to start over. You don’t need to become a different teacher. You need to say the simple, predictable line, show the move, rehearse the repair, and keep the minutes you gain. In xSELeratED, that’s what October is for: not proving control, but cultivating a culture that can recover together. When we re-state, re-teach, and repair - calmly, predictably - students learn how to belong together.

Cycling it Out

Every Renorming Cycle (In 15 Minutes or Less)

Purpose: Reset culture without restarting the year:

Name the Drift (2 min): Neutral pattern + impact. (e.g. “Transitions stretched from 1 minute to 3. That meant fewer minutes for labs.”)
Re-State the Norm (1 min): One sentence, posted. (e.g. “Signal > freeze > eyes up > hands empty.”)
Model (2 min): You show once; learners demonstrate once - narrate the why.
Practice & Time (4 min): Two brisk reps; celebrate seconds gained.
Teach Repair (3 min): Miss > name impact > choose a fix > rejoin.
Lock-In (3 min): Quick call/response; close with your boundary-and-belonging line. (e.g. “We’re renorming to gain back learning minutes. I’ll hold the boundary - and stay with you through it.”)

Boundaries/Belonging Alignment:

Clarity: Do I have a single-sentence norm?

Consistency: What exact line will I say every time?

Care: Is the repair path visible and practiced?

7-Minute Team Briefing (Leaders/PLCs) in seconds:

One success (30s)
One norm to tighten (30s)
One student celebration (30s)
Practice the adult line out loud (90s)
Choose two metrics to watch (30s)
Confirm the repair menu language (60s)
Who’s doing what by Friday? (60s)

Family Touchpoint

Subject/Note: Our class is renorming one routine

This week, we’re resetting:

At home, ask me to show:

If we miss, we repair by:

The heart of renorming is that little word ‘we.’ We drifted, we reset, we gain minutes back. That “we-ness” is culture. It is belonging. It is community and shared responsibility to each other.

Dr. Leigh Reagan Alley is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Maine at Augusta, the designer of the first-ever Masters of Arts Program in Whole Child Education, and a co-founder of xSELeratED.