I’ll admit, there is not much that can happen in a classroom that puts a smile on my face faster than walking in to see students circled up having a discussion about a shared text.  To me, that is the essence of what a school should be.  

That is exactly what I saw earlier this week when I walked into one of our Spanish classrooms in the high school.  I settled in to listen.  This circle discussion was not necessarily what I would call a classic Socratic Seminar, as the teacher was still facilitating the discussion, but she was doing so with tremendous skill.  Students were universally engaged in the discussion, and I quickly noticed a number of other strategies being employed by the teacher to ensure a high quality, cognitively rigorous conversation.  First, each student had an iPad on their lap, open to the poem in question.  It was very clear that all of the students had spent some time reading and wrestling with the poem’s meaning, as each copy had annotations in the margins and highlighted sections.  Annotating text, talking to the text, or whatever you commonly call it, is an essential practice in a literacy classroom (hint: all classrooms are literacy classrooms).  The teacher was also strategically cold calling students.  Cold calling is a simple classroom management strategy, but it is a powerful one.  For those teachers who use it regularly, they quickly build an academic culture where all students know they are accountable for engaging with the lesson, as they could be called upon at any time to contribute.  Perhaps it is subtle classroom psychology, but when a student knows he or she might be called on anyway, they seem more willing to contribute willfully, without being called on.  That is what I was seeing.  Lots of spontaneous contributions and exchanges amongst students, with the teacher there to bring students on the fringes into the conversation.  

Honestly, seeing students in a circle in a classroom almost seems like an act of pedagogical defiance.  The square room, the square tables (especially in pandemic mode), and all those right angles sometimes scream for predictability and order.  But then you have students in a circle, engaging in spontaneous conversation around a shared text.  Instead of being oriented to the teacher, students are in communication with each other, with the physical cues that everyone in the space has something to contribute.  It’s Arthur’s Round Table in the learning context, where no opinion is inherently weightier than any other, perhaps only on the merits of the opinion and corresponding evidence itself.  

It probably would not be surprising that when given the chance to work with a team to design the high school of the future, we settled on the name “Circulos” (“Circles” in Spanish) for the school.  There is so much beauty and power when students are engaged in authentic conversation and discourse with each other, and we couldn’t resist making that the signature pedagogy of the school.  A multi-million dollar grant and lots of blood, sweat and tears later, and the design became a reality.  At Círculos, the idea of the circle discussion moved out more broadly to include the idea of expanding students’ social capital by enlarging their network or circle to include community organizers, working professionals, and other potential allies who could enrich the educational experience of each student.  

The beautiful thing is you don’t need a special school to harness one of the most powerful pedagogies available.  It only takes a few moments to circle up and be drawn in to deep, substantial conversations.  In a world where discussion is increasingly linear and uni-directional, we could all use a little more circle time.  

 

This week here at Lincoln we are celebrating Costa Rican Independence.  After navigating nearly 18 months in pandemic mode, seeing our preschool and elementary students parade around the school’s central plaza in their traditional Costa Rican clothes, carrying their lanterns (a Costa Rican tradition), it was hard not to get a little emotional.  Our Student Life team pulled out all the stops to put together a week of traditional dances, music, crafts, food, and celebration.  Our COVID restrictions don’t allow parents to participate on campus for many of these activties, so we have been live-streaming events to our community.  The energy and excitement has been palpable, and I’m very much looking forward to the festivities over the course of the week.

The activities got me thinking about the essential role that traditions, assemblies, and celebrations play in the life of a school.  These are the moments that make school truly memorable and meaningful.  My oldest two kids, now in middle school, attended an elementary school that was a full-fledged adherent to the “University Starts Now” program.  Each month, the school put on a college pep-rally.  Every class on campus had a different college “sponsor” and students all wore their college shirts to celebrate the pep-rally.  During the 5 years my kids attended, they cycled through the University of Washington, USC, Berkeley, and another half dozen college destinations.  Staff hung banners and college pennants from the second floor, and the party was on.  These were rocking celebrations that students came to adore, and it gave the school a strong college-going culture and identity.  The school, located in the heart of Santa Ana, CA, was one of the poorest in the district and in the state.  Yet my son’s best friend, who also lived close by the school in the neighborhood, had older siblings attending some of the best universities in the country.  I remarked to my wife that in the middle class neighborhood I lived in, I didn’t have any friends with siblings (or parents) who went to the Ivy League.  Simply stated, the school had built so much tradition and celebration around college, that students and families came to expect college at the conclusion of high school.  They’d been thinking about it and planning for it on a monthly basis since they started kindergarten.  

At the high school in San Francisco where I was principal, we had traditions that reinforced our aspirations to provide a truly student-centered and personalized experience to every one of our students.  Perhaps no moment better encapsulated this aspiration than our annual paper-plate awards.  Each year, our advisors finished the year with a simple ceremony.  Every student received an award.  This award was neither generic nor predictable.  Each student received an award based on their uniques contributions, personalities, challenges and triumphs.  Students might receive the “not going home until I finish” award for a student who always stayed after school until all his work was complete, or the “hot cheetos” award to the student most consistently caught trying to sneak a bag of the cheesy snacks into class.  We did the same thing amongst staff.  Those simple, hand-crafted paper plate awards are some of my most prized professional possessions.  They remind me of how I was valued for my unique contributions, and sometimes poked fun at my similarly unique quirks.  No surprise, perhaps, that our school was recognized by Stanford University as a national model for personalizing the learning experience for students.  

  School leaders and classroom teachers alike can and should thoughtfully consider how to take advantage of rituals and traditions that can reinforce shared values and help socialize newcomers into a greater awareness of what really matters on campus or in the classroom.  At Envision Education, the charter management organization where I worked while a high school principal, had a beautiful tradition they called “props.”  At the close of a meeting or even a hiring day with external candidates, we would inevitably circle up for a quick opportunity for people to express gratitude.  There was no individual requirement to say anything.  Usually, the short expressions mentioned contributions made by individuals, or perhaps a more general statement of appreciation for a shared experience or even a good meal.  Admittedly, there were a few occasions where it felt like we were perhaps going through the motions.  I wasn’t always an enthusiastic participant, especially if the discussion had been heated or difficult.  But we engaged in the ritual anyway, and I believe it really did have the impact of helping us all be more grateful – for the opportunity to work in education, to work with other committed people, and to work with young people during some of the most formative years of their lives.  

While we rightfully focus on high quality instruction, operational efficiency, and day to day excellence in our educational systems, we should never underestimate the power of traditions and rituals to shape the professional and student cultures on campus.  These moments can bring teams together and reinforce the values we hope to instill in students and staff alike in powerful ways.  

Even for the most tech saavy amongst educators, the past 18 months have pushed all of us to broaden our technology skills.  While the initial need to integrate new technologies to facilitate virtual and hybrid learning may have been under force and duress, I think that enough time has gone by for us to be able to step back and more thoughtfully assess the platforms and programs that we want to integrate into our classrooms and instructional systems.  Developing a deeper understanding of how the technology we use actually works has become an essential skill.  I’m not necessarily saying that every teacher should know how to code or manage a network in order to use technology tools in the classroom, but I am saying that having true ownership of our instructional practice requires that we have more than a superficial handle of the technology that we are using.  There are three reaons why I think we have to push ourselves towards deeper understanding of our technology.  

First, there is a lot of unused functionality in the technology that we are bringing into our classrooms.  Of course, untapped functionality isn’t a problem per se if that potential isn’t useful.  But I would argue that sometimes the more sophisticated features unlock really important tools for the teacher.  For example, if you are using Zoom or Teams rooms for virtual or hybrid learning, and aren’t using the breakout rooms , your students are missing out.  Just like most whole group instruction could be enriched by some think pair shares or small group discussions, whole group Zoom meetings get old fast, and limit the amount of student discourse.  Even before Teams came out with better breakout room functionality, my most talented technology teachers were setting up channels in every session to allow students to talk to each other as seamlessly as possible.  It makes a big difference.  Similarly, some of my teachers discovered that they could easily sync their online notebooks in OneNote through their class rosters in Teams, making it easier for students (and themselves) to keep work up to date and organized.  It is very easy to get into a groove with the features we are most comfortable with, and lose interest in going deeper.  I’ve been in a lot of meetings where a school is looking for a new software solution, and it turns out that the software they already have has the capability to do precisely what they are looking for.  Schools can tap on the expertise of teacher leaders to share some of the most useful, albeit less commonly used tools.  

Second, tech solutions inevitably run into issues.  Even when you have the best equipment and most up-to-date software, there are likely going to unexpected problems when kids are coming in and out and moving from program to program.  Throughout the day, students struggle to log-in, updates come in the middle of a lesson, or a screen refuses to share itself where there had never been a problem before.  Sometimes it’s an underlying network issue.  Sometimes the computer just needs a restart.  These inevitable hiccups are certainly frustrating, but the most tech-savvy teachers find ways quickly to trouble-shoot, problem solve, or snap together a last minute work around.  If you can’t diagnose an issue on your own, you are likely in trouble.  Even in a school like mine where we have tech specialists and a robust IT team, the chance of getting help within 5 minutes is not high – and a 5 minute or more delay in a classroom can feel like an eternity.  It pays to have a deeper understanding of how the tech functions so that you can be more self-sufficient when things don’t go exactly according to plan.

Third and finally, we want to model for our students what it looks like to be responsible users of technology.  While I too share serious reservations about the impact of technology on mental health, adolescent development, and social-emotional well-being, schools can’t pretend that students won’t have to cope with these issues.  We have a responsibility to prepare students to navigate the wider world where technology is ubiquitous.  This includes engaging students in discussions about the appropriate and ethical uses of emerging technology, developing and practicing routines for limiting screen time, and avoiding the darker parts of the internet.  Students should understand how the algorithms behind social media like buttons and viral posts operate, so they can be more responsible consumers.  Students need to see adult teachers and mentors exercising agency and efficacy with technology, instead of seeing them throwing their hands up in frustration or as victims of the new tech paradigm we all seem to live in.