A private podcast for students in the June 2026 session of COME TO CLASS with Amelia Hruby, PhD.
Hello. Hello, beautiful people in COME TO CLASS. This is a private pod episode answering the first question that I got through our asynchronous form. So if you have questions about anything in COME TO CLASS or things that come up as you're moving through the materials, you can submit them through the form and then I will answer them here on our private podcast feed and I will also share these in our online portal. So today's question comes from Annie and let me read it you.
Amelia Hruby:I would love to know your thoughts on co creating Community Guidelines with the people you're teaching versus presenting a set of already developed guidelines at the beginning of class. I feel like co creation can be great for a longer container or highly personal topic, but I once had someone tell me that you must always co create the guidelines with the group, even if it is only a one hour class. Okay. That's the question. And now let me tell you what I think.
Amelia Hruby:So I really appreciate this question because it's something I've thought about a lot. And what I will say is I think that this in some ways goes back to teaching style as well as the sort of value system that you want to be present in your classes. So I first learned about Co creating Community Guidelines when I was working in organizing spaces. And so we had people who would come together with a sort of common either, you know, societal problem that we're working on or vision for a solution. And in those instances, it was really important that everyone in the room be able to arrive and participate as an equal part of the process.
Amelia Hruby:So I find that Co creating Community Guidelines is a way of really like dissolving power hierarchies in the room, and it's a way to give everyone a voice to invite and insist that everyone participate at the very beginning of opening a container. And in certain settings, I think that makes a lot of sense. Like I said, when I was in organizing spaces, it's important that there isn't some, like, de facto leader, that there isn't some, you know, unauthorized or appointed person in charge there. But I don't know that that is always the case when we are teaching in our businesses. So I think that this like advice that Annie's citing, like someone once told me you must always co create the guidelines with the group.
Amelia Hruby:I don't think it applies for every setting. Because when we're selling something in our business, we're teaching something, whether it's a class, workshop, course, a lot of what people are buying is like the knowledge and information we have. Right? Like, they want to be guided through that transformation that we've promised them in our transformation statement. And for many people, like, they want us to take charge in that process.
Amelia Hruby:And sometimes that's great. And we're like, hell, yeah. Let me tell you everything you need to know. Let me give you, you know, knowledge, process, activities. I got this.
Amelia Hruby:You can go away and do the thing. Like, sometimes you feel like that as the teacher. Other times, it can feel like the student is just offloading all agency and responsibility for learning to you, and I find that that just doesn't work. You can't make somebody learn something. They cannot abdicate their own agency and intelligence in the learning process and expect to have learned it at the end.
Amelia Hruby:So I do believe in breaking down power hierarchies in classrooms. I do believe that it's important to really think about, like, what is the role you want to play as the teacher? And what does it mean to you to be the teacher? But I don't think that every single type of learning container is well constructed for co creating Community Guidelines. I would say especially a one hour class.
Amelia Hruby:You know, if I hop on a free webinar and all of a sudden I'm spending fifteen minutes co creating Community Guidelines with people I have never met before and may never see again, I don't know that that is like it's it doesn't feel like a supportive practice for breaking down hierarchy and bringing everybody into the room, which I think is the intention of co creating Community Guidelines. But if you're doing it in the wrong setting, with the wrong group, for like, I don't think it's something you do just because I think it's something that you do because you really want to insist on a specific way of people relating to each other, and you want to foreground participants agency in the space. And so, as Annie mentioned in this question, like I have done that when there were longer containers, where the goal was for people to interact with each other more. Spaces where I was more of a facilitator, I found it really helpful to co create community guidelines in advance and really surface like what do people here need? What do we want to ask of each other?
Amelia Hruby:But I also found that doing that the first time people meet requires some finesse, right? Because when often when you Co create Community Guidelines, like you're asking people to share what they want, and that's actually quite vulnerable. And I think it there needs to be a whole process in place for how to do this. So when I would do it, I would often start with, you know, opening a room by saying hello, and then I would have people introduce themselves. And then we would go through some reflective prompts like, what helps you feel most supportive when you're meeting new people?
Amelia Hruby:How do you like to learn? Like what's important for to happen outside of the space so you can show up in this space? And we would move through prompts like that, and then we would have space to Co create Community Guidelines. And so with that, I would do it a few different ways. Sometimes I would ask each person to share one guideline for us, and we would do that, go around the Zoom room and everyone would share one thing they wanted to add to our list of community guidelines.
Amelia Hruby:And at the end, would say, okay, is there anything else that we feel is missing here? Does anyone wanna add something additional? And we would do that. Sometimes I would just let people volunteer and not insist that everyone offers something. But again, like then that shifts, you know, whose community is this?
Amelia Hruby:Who do they who are the guidelines for? So I think my overall answer to this is like, that can be a beautiful practice. Co creating community guidelines can really craft a container very intentionally from the get go, if what you want to foreground is community agency and participation there. But if you are teaching a one hour Zoom class and really what you want is the space to communicate a lot of information and then do a practice activity with people, and they're not really gonna be interacting with each other, only with you, then I don't see a reason to well, that's not true. Then I I don't think you have to co create Community Guidelines.
Amelia Hruby:If you wanted to, you certainly could, and you might have reasons for that. But I don't think it is necessary 100% of the time there. So again, when I think about co creating community guidelines, it's because there's going to be an actual sense of community in the space. And if you are in a teaching container where you are really just sharing the information and the most community aspect of it is like people are putting questions in the chat or something. They're not really there's no like FaceTime or open conversation with each other.
Amelia Hruby:Then I would just have community guidelines that you create. Or something I've been starting shifting to subtly just semantically is just calling them culture guidelines. Right? Because culture is like the shape of the space, and a leader can determine the culture or create the culture or set the terms of the culture that the people who show up in the space follow. So I've been thinking about this in terms of, you know, inside the interweb or in COME TO CLASS.
Amelia Hruby:I have not had, like, co created community guidelines, but I do have these sort of, like, culture guidelines for us, the ethos we bring and some of the ways we behave in the space. And so I've been making that subtle shift as a way of sort of respecting that like, yeah, I'm not really like bringing everybody in as a community to create and co create these guidelines, but they do shape the type of community that we can have here. So hopefully that helps, and I welcome follow-up questions on this. Overall, I will just say that like rooting everything into your teaching style and intentions is the way that we can shape our containers, And that can include co creating community guidelines, but I don't think it has to. So thanks again for the question, Annie.
Amelia Hruby:I hope this was helpful for you and for everyone who gets to hear it. And I'm excited to see everyone hopefully in office hours soon. Bye, friends.