I’ve written before about getting students to shift their perspective on Day 1, you can check it out here.
The Day 1 activity is a math problem designed to get student thinking about the nature of time and why it is so fleeting. I place a prism in the window and track a rainbow over the course of the ten to fifteen minutes it takes to run through the math problem of adding up the amount of time students spend in my classroom, which amounts to approximately six and a quarter days, and divide that by how many days old they are to get a percentage of their life that they spend in my room. In short, it’s not a very large percentage. It usually leads into a great conversation about the importance of being present. The short version my first day is an activity to try and relay the importance of how very little time we have together as a class and that time is special. Thinking about how long it takes to learn from someone (both teachers and students learn from each other), how long it takes to appreciate others, to learn empathy towards each other.
As I was reflecting about the other activities I do on the first few days of the school year I realized they all have to do with mindfulness. We often talk about getting kids excited about the year on Day 1 but we don’t always talk about the choice of being excited. We have to follow our excitement up on Day 2 (and every day after it) with a compelling reason to want to come to class beyond the content we teach. We have to be mindful of what that truly means. This important aspect is not often taught in teacher training programs.
How do you get your students to choose to be present the moment they walk through your classroom door?
Day 2 is often just as important (or more important) as Day 1.
On Day 2 I would begin the process of building a team. A learning team. I was just one of the players but I had to convince everyone that they deserved to be here too. They were too important to skip class or stay home. I needed them to be here to help make the learning happen. To help it grow.
What is intrinsic motivation and inspiration?
When I was a new teacher I had randomly subscribed to a daily affirmation email. After a few years the producer of this daily email sent out a message saying that there would be no more daily affirmations. I was sad. I had grown accustomed to seeing it in my inbox every morning. I had even begun sharing these affirmations with my students. We talked about their meaning, importance, and relevance (not always) to the current state of our classroom. Now they were no more.
For one reason or another I had kept all of the emails. I really don’t have a good reason why I did this, I guess they cheered me up on gloomy teacher days. As the years rolled by I decided to put them all into one document that added up to over four hundred motivational quotes and mantras 44 pages long (you can have it, right here). I then decided to try and incorporate these quotes into a learning activity with my students. These quotes had helped me refocus and slow my brain down so I could be teach better (or at least I thought so).
On the second day of school I began to incorporate these quotes into a team building/get-to-know-you activity. I wanted something that would force kids to slow down a little bit and focus on only one or two things for an entire class. Many teachers would rush right into curriculum by day two. I chose to front load a little more mindfulness at the outset. Whether or not we ‘got to’ everything was not my end goal for my class. To help students want to become lifelong learners, is my singular goal.
In my 6th grade class, many students didn’t know each other, or at least not well, because they all came from one of four different feeder elementary schools. Even if some of them were friends it didn’t matter because 6th grade is the first step into middle school and everything that is new is old and up is down and cats are dogs and nothing stays forever unless it does. Just like teaching geography, middle school is complicated. Making new friends and learning how to create collaborative relationships are just a few of the skills that need to be practiced. It’s not easy. Middle school teachers are well aware of the tricky nature to the first few weeks of the school year.
I had four sections of (approximately) twenty-four students per section with eight tables of three students per table. After the Day 1 conversation about the breathtakingly brief amount of time our class would have together, each class being unique and a different experience, I would ask my students to divide into groups of three with kids they didn’t know. They would have to complete the following tasks:
- Each class has to decorate the room with eight pages worth of quotes.
- Each table receives 1 sheet of quotes.
- On each page is approximately 20(ish) quotes.
- All quotes must all be cut out into neat square(ish) shapes
- Each group member needs to choose their Top 3 quotes.
- Each group will present a Top 9 to me for approval.
- The rest of the quotes could be discarded or traded to another group.
- Once a Top 9 was established and approved, all quotes needed to be taped up on the walls of the classroom, under desks, behind chairs, as many weird places as they could devise that didn’t interfere with normal class function (no taping on the phone, clock, light switch, my computer, TV, et al… you get the point).
- There is 20 minutes to complete this part of the the activity.
It’s hard for these 6th graders to choose only 3 per person. Debates would spring up as to which quote was ‘better’ than another. Some kids didn’t like any of the quotes at their table or any other table. This was all OK. I was looking for the debate, the motivation to respond a certain way and make mental notes. I’d use this moment to start building trust with my class. I’d rotate through the groups and debate or discuss why certain quotes resonated (or didn’t) with each student. What did a particular quote mean to them?
- Once all quotes were up, each student would ‘walk the wall’ and choose one (only one) quote and remove it to keep.
- Return to your seat and tape the quote to their binders.
- Answer the following questions (ticket to leave that day for me to read later):
Why do you like this quote?
Can this quote relate to your life (and/or this class)?
Do you want to come back to this class tomorrow? Why?
The quote they choose was theirs and theirs alone for the entire school year. No one else in the section would have it on their binder. We would spend the next 15-20 minutes as students shared the quote they chose with the rest of class. What spoke to them? What about it motivated them? Did they ever hear of the word “Ikigai”? I’d get to tell them and what my motivation was for coming to school every day.
My single goal is to create a place where you go home at the end of the school day desperately wanting to come back to tomorrow. If I do that, then the learning will take care of itself.
We, as a class, were building a team of learners. We were beginning to build bonds of community within the walls of class. Some students would ask each other questions about the quote they chose, some would ask to trade. It got the kids talking about motivation and about choosing to want to be in a classroom meant choosing to be present with each and every one of us in there, not just me. Choosing to learn as a team meant we all had to want to be there. If they chose to be there, my promise to them was that I would choose to be there too.
worldgeochat 