Our oldest daughter attended kindergarten at Marshall, one of the smallest elementary schools in San Francisco Unified located in the heart of the Mission District. We came to adore this small community of barely more than 200 students. One of my favorite parts of the school happened each morning as parents and students alike gathered on the playground for the morning meeting. This schoolwide, daily ritual brought everyone together to sing, laugh, give a few brief announcements, and kick off the school day as an entire community. Marshall is a dual language school, with much of the student population from immigrant families from different countries in Central America. The schoolwide dual language program attracted a modest number of both white and black families from around the city who wanted their children to learn Spanish. The scene outside the school each morning was a beautiful one of integration and community building.
Morning meetings are a somewhat common practice in preschools and elementary schools. When I moved south to Santa Ana, the practice had moved from a schoolwide experience on many campuses, to a classroom affair. When I walked onto one of our largest campuses one morning not long into my new job there and came upon a large community morning meeting, I soon learned that the principal was also a recent transplant from San Francisco Unified and was continuing the tradition. Those types of experiences became rarer and rarer, as we implemented safety protocols that slowed down family and community access to schools amidst reports of estranged relatives attending events and homeless people roaming campuses. Ensuring the safety of students on campus can make it undertstandably difficult to welcome anyone who wants to walk through the front gates.
And now the COVID-19 pandemic adds yet another challenge to building community on campus. At my current school, we don’t allow parents onto campus at all unless they have an appointment. Around the world, morning meetings, classroom book reading, and other events that bring students, families and staff together, have been even further disrupted.
Despite the challenges schools face to connect with families and build community, teachers and staff continue to push for strong practices that help students connect each day. In our classrooms at Lincoln, each preschool and elementary day starts with the morning meeting. As I walk classrooms in the morning, I get to peek in and spend a few minutes with students as they start the school day together in song and smiles. Last week I found myself holding a tree pose with 3 year-olds. I’m still a big fan of the morning meeting, and the opportunity it provides students to connect with each other, center themselves in the classroom, and prepare for the learning of the day. In fact, it’s a practice that unfortunately is thought of as something for little kids only.
I think that many adults are part of a morning community that helps them prepare for the day, whether its an early morning yoga group, an agile team stand-up SCRUM , or even a shared family prayer. These brief moments to remind others that they matter in our lifes and our work can provide a powerful socio-emotional boost to even the most independent of adults.
There is still a lot of experimentation happening at the middle and high school levels to determine what this type of connective and grounding experience might look like. Perhaps even something as simple as the morning announcements approximates the idea of a schoolwide pause to share a few moments as a whole community. I know many schools have been experimenting with schoolwide mindfulness practices to start off the morning to help everyone make their transition into the learning for the day. Certainly individual teachers at all grade levels incorporate a variety of activities that capture the connecting spirit of the morning meeting to launch the learning day or class period. This concept was at the heart of our Círculos high school design in Santa Ana, which won a multi-million dollar school design grant. Círculos means “circles” in Spanish, and the circle discussion brings students and teachers together daily and forms the foundational pedagogy of the school.
Whatever the grade level, schools have to be places where each student feels welcome, celebrated, and included. There must be a strong feeling of belonging. Morning meetings, and other deliberately connective activities and pedagogies like them, are a key ingredient of any school that professes to be student-centered. After all, the foundation of student-centered learning is strong relationships and connective tissue between students, staff, parents, and the community alike. Morning meetings are a powerful pedagogical tool to move us in the right direction.