What works for small things, works for big ones.
—Lauren Wolk, Echo Mountain, p. 184
I am married to a high school physics teacher, and during the virtual-teaching days of the Covid pandemic, he had a favorite line when he felt frustrated. He’d say, “It’s like I’m building little houses that are all going to get burned down.” What he meant was that the adaptations he was making to move from in-person teaching and learning to online teaching and learning felt like a lot of work that would eventually end up on the cutting room floor, or burned to the ground, unnecessary when everyone was back in a face-to-face setting.
His frustration was understandable and not unique to him, and yet, as I worked with teachers and students in their virtual classrooms, I often saw practices that were fireproof—that is, little houses that could move right into the brick-and-mortar classroom neighborhood.
Here’s an example:
During Morning Meeting on Whip Wednesdays, Mrs. T. puts a question on her shared screen and her fourth graders talk in Zoom breakout rooms about how they would answer it. “What do you daydream about?” was a question from a recent Whip Wednesday, and like every Whip Wednesday when the question is posed, the kids burst into a babble of conversation.
Mrs. T. lets the chatter roll for about 15 seconds before asking everyone to remember who’s in the small group they’ll be talking with. Then she reminds them that when the breakout-room invitation pops up on their screen, she’s going to tip her Yahtzee timer upside down to see if everyone can get into their rooms before the sand runs from the top to the bottom. The use of the timer was a mid-November twist when Mrs. T. decided she needed to work more on developing her students’ conversational turn taking and their time management skills, competencies that were always in progress for fourth graders and that the virtual classroom setting made extra challenging to master.
On the day kids were discussing their daydreams, I was in a breakout room with Monique, Edie, and Hamsa. Monique went first, explaining that she usually daydreams about the future because, as she put it, “I’m going to need to know what I’ll need to stay stable, because, you know, I want to be an entrepreneur when I grow up, and so I’ll need to know how to do stuff, like packaging and all of that.”
Edie went next.
“I daydream about owning a dog ranch,” she announced, and Hamsa followed with, “I daydream about driving luxury cars.”
After another pause, Edie said, “Who wants to be the spokesperson?” and Monique volunteered.
When the whole-class report-outs were starting, Penny leaned into her computer screen, scanning the square boxes of her peers as she said, “I bet our class has some really weird daydreams!”
Before Carmen could share her group’s daydreams, Sasha predicted that Talon daydreamed about playing in the NFL someday.
“Is that what you said, Talon, that you daydream about the NFL?” Sasha asked.
“Wait a second, Sasha,” Carmen admonished. “I’m going to tell you!”
And then, when all the spokespeople had reported for their groups, Maggie said, “Too bad Rae’s not here today. We gotta remember to ask her what she daydreams about.”
Tuning In
Dan Goleman and Peter Senge, in their book Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education (2014), write about three ways a school community can organize their efforts to support students’ academic, social, and emotional development: Make opportunities for students to know themselves, to tune in to others, and to understand the larger world.
By midyear in Mrs. T.’s virtual classroom, Yahtzee timer data showed that her fourth graders were improving their time on task and their collaboration skills, so she was feeling satisfied with the progress. But I noticed something else happening, too: Whip Wednesdays were a tuning-in tool. Over the 14 weeks I had been in Mrs. T’s virtual classroom, kids’ interest in each other was deepening. Whether they were talking about daydreams, a change they’d like to make in the world, or who they would take if they decided to live on a deserted island—all past Whip Wednesday questions—these small-group conversations were a powerful strategy to encourage Tuning In to Others, which, Goleman explains,“is the basis of empathy—understanding how other people feel and how they think about the world” (p. 25).
And then, right when I was considering the importance of getting kids to tune in to each other, I read a line from Echo Mountain, a gorgeous and astonishing chapter book by Lauren Wolk. In the story, Cate, an old woman with deep knowledge of healing, tells the young girl who is her apprentice that she once snared a deer.
“I’ve made a snare,” Ellie says. “But not for deer.”
Cate “flaps a hand tiredly” and says, “What works for small things, works for big ones.”
When I pointed out to Mrs. T. what I’d noticed about her kids’ deepening connection, and how the questions she posed seemed to be the secret sauce for helping them tune in to each other, she thought for a moment.
“Well, I’m tempted to say it’s an unintended consequence, but when I think about it, I’m hardly ever doing something with kids that doesn’t have an ulterior motive.”
She wasn’t lying. Mrs. T. could have found other, easier ways to improve her students’ time management, but she took time to design fourth-grader-friendly questions in a Whip Wednesday format to do it.
Another, more subtle example of a Mrs. T. well-intentioned plan working to get the big game as well as the small: Friday’s morning meeting theme is “Fri-yay Friday!” The activity is always a mystery until Mrs. T.’s reveal, like watching a funny TikTok video, or having a surprise guest, or doing yoga. Early in the school year, a fourth grader said, “Why’s it called Fri-yay again?”
Mrs. T. said, “Because ‘Yay! We just had a whole week of learning!’” Fri-yay Friday was about being playful at the end of the week and also a chance to reinforce a value Mrs. T. believes and acts on constantly: School is where you want to be.
Helping kids tune in to each other is one big brass ring of social and emotional learning; when children are learning in virtual environments, grabbing that ring can seem even more aspirational than usual, but even in face-to-face settings, it is an estimable goal. If we watch Mrs. T. and listen to Cate, though, we can find the inspiration we need. So often, it’s the way teachers use language, and invite kids to use theirs, that’s the key to knowing ourselves, tuning in to others, and understanding the larger world. Talking and listening, watching and writing, reading and creating give rise to this and that. This ability to work with others successfully and that connection to each other. This special experience on Friday and that sense that school is cool.
When you aim for this sweet spot as a teacher, kids will support each other in getting what they need, socially, emotionally, and academically. You’ve snared the rabbit and the deer, and you’ve built a little house designed to work in any context.
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Some popular Whip Wednesday questions ★ What’s an animal you’d like to resize so it could be a pet? ★ If you could create an app to make your life better, what would it do? ★ You discover a beautiful island where you decide to build a new society. What’s the first rule you put in place? ★ If you could have one song play every time you walked into a room, what would the song be? |
