Anyone out there American Idol fans? We are Idol fans in our house. Hard to believe it's been 20 years since Kelly Clarkson was the first winner. I came across a video montage of her during that first season and I went down the rabbit hole of listening to performances from that first season. Loved watching her perform "A Moment Like This" on the night she won. I was thinking about the word and the concept of moments last week after Cardboard Creation Day and Play Day.
Are you ready for another book recommendation from me? Several years ago, I read this amazing book called The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. It's not an education specific book, but it is one that had a big impact on me as an educator and a school leader. In the book, they share, “Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories.” It's interesting to stop and think about all the moments that make up a life. Do you remember every moment? Of course not. But 'defining moments...those stick with us. When 4th graders come to pick out their birthday books, I tell them one of my defining moment stories that my mom created for me. On the morning of my 10th birthday, I woke up to find all of my panda bears lined up wearing party hats. And hidden behind them was a tape recorder (I have to usually explain to kids what that is!) playing a recording of people singing "Happy Birthday." It looked and sounded like my pandas were serenading me. Then she had made a special shirt with an iron on 10th birthday graphic...this was back when the only cricuts were actual crickets! And she made homemade pizza and lemonade and brought it into school so that my whole class could have a birthday lunch with me. Do I remember my 9th birthday or my 11th birthday? Nope. But I will never forget turning double digits. All because my mom created a defining moment for me. The authors of The Power of Moments explain what "thinking in moments" means: “But for an individual human being, moments are the thing. Moments are what we remember and what we cherish. Certainly we might celebrate achieving a goal, such as completing a marathon or landing a significant client—but the achievement is embedded in a moment. Every culture has its prescribed set of big moments: birthdays and weddings and graduations, of course, but also holiday celebrations and funeral rites and political traditions. They seem “natural” to us. But notice that every last one of them was invented, dreamed up by anonymous authors who wanted to give shape to time. This is what we mean by “thinking in moments”: to recognize where the prose of life needs punctuation.” I would argue that in the prose of school, we need punctuation. Do you remember the math lesson you taught on the third Tuesday in September? How about the science activity that you did during the last week of May last year? Or maybe your students remember every detail from the reading lesson from 2 weeks ago? I would guess not. A handful of people said to me last week...the kids are going to remember this day for the rest of the year. That was after Cardboard Creation Day. And walking down the hall on Thursday during play day, I overheard a 2nd grader shout to no one in particular..."This is the best day of my life!" We managed to create some pretty incredible defining moments for all of our students last week. I would say we provided some serious exclamation marks in the prose of school! I had the pleasure of watching every grade as they entered the gym last week. As an adult, I worried that kids would see the cardboard that had already been used or the torn pieces and be discouraged by the image. But watching their eyes light up...that's not what they saw. They saw more cardboard than they had ever seen in one space and they saw something else...In that moment they saw potential. As adults, we need to spend more time looking at situations through the eager, engaged eyes of kids. Similarly, as adults, we might have looked around our classrooms on Thursday and seen Pokemon cards (everywhere!), a mess of toys and games, unstructured wasted time where we weren't getting through the scope and sequence. But if you looked closer, and looked at the day and the spaces through the eyes of eager, engaged kids, we would see kids teaching other kids new games. We would see kids who never played together before, asking each other to play. We would see kids problem solving and designing. Building and creating and laughing and happy. One of my favorite scenes, a defining moment I won't forget...third graders playing school. On a day when they could play and do whatever they wanted, they chose to be you, to teach. And clearly they have had some great models because their schedule and their lessons were awesome! We can learn a lot from those two days last week. But for now the lesson I hope we walk away with is how to think in moments, in particular, defining moments. Of course, our students aren't going to remember every lesson and everything we do each day. But how can we punctuate the prose of school? How can we embed some of the those defining moments in our classrooms? It doesn't have to be a whole day of play or it doesn't require a gym full of cardboard. Think back to the defining moments that happened for you in school. What made those moments stand out from the other moments? It might help to take the perspective of our eager, engaged kids...see the lesson or activity from their viewpoint. You just never know what is going to become a defining moment for a student. I actually ran into an 8th grader this weekend who was once a 4th grader at my previous school. She made a point to tell me that she still had the birthday book I gave her and that she remembered that day when she got to pick out her book. I didn't remember that moment, but she did. Four years later that was a defining moment embedded in her memory. You might not know that the experience you create in your classroom or the activity that you plan or even the conversation you have with a student is a defining moment for them, one that will not be forgotten. Every day in school is made up of moments; let's make sure we are embedding defining moments whenever we can. I wonder what defining moments from this week will be remembered by our kids long after their time at Clough?
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