Start the Spring 2026 Semester with Intention
Spring is a moment to increase the momentum built in the fall and refocus your campus on connection, inquiry, and reflection. As coursework intensifies and campus dynamics evolve, it becomes a critical opportunity to reinforce shared practices that support open dialogue, trust, and thoughtful exchange.
This Spring Planning Toolkit brings together practical, research-informed resources to help you strengthen classroom norms, re-energize student engagement, and embed dialogue as a shared practice across campus.
All resources are free, flexible, and designed to work across a range of campus settings.
When to Use These Tools
Whether you're starting the semester or planning for the future, these resources are designed to meet a variety of spring needs:
- Early semester: Set classroom or group norms, rebuild connection, and reaffirm shared expectations
- Mid-semester: Use Listening Sessions or Structures for Dialogue to gather feedback and recalibrate
- Student leadership transitions: Support outgoing and incoming leaders through reflection and alignment
- End-of-year planning: Surface insights to inform summer programming and fall preparation
- Moments of tension: Use scenario-based tools to strengthen team coordination and campus response
Activities to Re-Engage Students This Spring
As students settle into the semester, they need space to reconnect, reflect, and reset. These flexible formats help faculty, student life teams, and facilitators create conditions for deeper listening, trust-building, and meaningful dialogue.
Simple, research-informed formats that help groups move beyond surface-level discussion to deepen reflection, foster active listening, and promote curiosity—in classrooms, retreats, and student group meetings.
A structured approach for surfacing insight, strengthening trust, and creating space for students, faculty, and staff to share experiences—and offer valuable insights that can shape course adjustments, student programs, or institutional planning.
Tools to Support Campus-Wide Dialogue Work
As new questions and tensions arise, campuses can benefit from shared tools and frameworks to navigate moments of uncertainty. These resources are designed to help leadership, faculty, and student-support teams respond with clarity and courage.
One-Pager: Navigating Campus Tensions (TCCC Scenario Exercise)
This scenario-based exercise equips teams to work through realistic campus challenges and align around shared response principles to support values-based decision-making and strengthen coordination across roles.
Guide: Designing Dialogues That Support Meaningful Engagement
This guide offers a clear framework for shaping conversations that build trust and support thoughtful exchange.
Why Dialogue Matters This Spring
By midyear, campus life can feel stretched. Academic demands rise, group dynamics settle into patterns, and early-year tensions may resurface. Across roles, students will continue to benefit from spaces in which they can speak openly, feel understood, and navigate disagreement without fear of judgment.
Structured dialogue offers a strategic way forward. Campuses that embed dialogue practices report stronger student connection, healthier classroom climates, and a greater willingness to engage with differing viewpoints. Dialogue isn’t just a response to conflict; it’s a foundation for resilience, connection, and shared purpose.
"Dartmouth is committed to helping our students learn to engage in dialogue across difference—an essential skill for training future leaders."
— Sian Leah Beilock, President, Dartmouth University
With the right structures and support, campuses can create environments in which students, faculty, and staff communicate with greater clarity, curiosity, and confidence—especially during the most demanding stretch of the year.
