September 26, 2022
It was an opener—an icebreaker—an activity similar to many others that had been initiated at the start of the school year. Unlike most, however, this one didn’t end when the period did; this one laid the groundwork for the entire year.
“Do you remember your ‘Some Day Wishes,’” I started, alluding to the figurative pixie dust they tossed into the air back in August, now, a little more than a month ago. “Why might they matter—or not matter—collectively or independently?”
I paused.
“Everyone grab a Post It note and bullet out your thoughts.”
By this point in the year, Mr. Martin and Ms. Carmichael had primed them for this type of thinking, asking them to consider a variety of robust content points, meant to access the various layers of a complex world. Whether talking about frames and edits to pictures, or exploring the cultural practices of a community, and the internal and external influences at play in each situation, students had already been asked to zoom in and zoom out, and then, to find connections between.
After I gave the directive to jot, I took a step to the left to retrieve my afternoon coffee. Right off the bat, before I could even bring the mug to my lips, the student directly in front of me broke the momentary hush in the room. Words escaped his mouth like a hiccup—like an uncontrollable impulse—and without pause, the boy next to him absorbed every last one of them. Then, just like the first student, he, too, sent words flying back, seam-over-seam, into the ears of the guy who started it all in the first place.
Rather amused—because it is exactly what I would have done had I been in his shoes—I walked over and tapped the stack of Post It notes in front of the boys. “Can you jot down your thoughts first. I promise we will get a chance to discuss—-”
But I noticed more words flying—more voices rising—and so I broke in.
“How many of you are external processors,” I asked, and a half a dozen hands shot up in unison. “In other words,” I said, smirking, “ how many of you—like me— hate being asked to do this by yourself before you can talk it out?” The two boys blushed a bit, but then they realized I understood where they were coming from.
“How many of you need a minute to think before you’re ready to talk?” I asked next, and a different crop of hands slid into the air, including hands belonging to Mr. Martin and Mrs. Carmichael.
“I understand the urge because I’m an external processor too,” I admitted, “but it is good for all of us to practice different thinking strategies. It not only challenges us to improve, it honors every kind of thinker. I promise you’ll get your time,” I told them. “But right now, let’s bullet out our thoughts.”
I walked back to the screen and pointed.
“I want you to think about what kind of impact our someday wishes might have on us? Our class? Our community. Then I want you to also think about the impact of framing abstract wishes into actionable wishes?” I continued. “For instance, instead of saying, ‘I wish students had a greater voice,’ is there a way to break that down? A way to think of an entry point that we can schedule so we know we made an impact?”
I paused a moment longer, wandering in and out of desks. while students jotted and Mr. Martin retrieved the chart paper.
“How about widening or narrowing the scope of impact? In other words, what might be the impact of turning a broad wish or a community wish—a “we” wish—into an individualized wish OR in turning individualized wishes into a community experience? How does that change things?”
I paused again.
“Now, discuss whatever stands out to you. You don’t need to go through the questions in order, one by one. Instead, attack the thing you most want to talk about, the thoughts you think need to be unpacked the most.”
All of us, Mr. Martin and Mrs. Carmichael and myself, wandered around, listening, poking and prodding. “What do you mean by that?” we asked, “Can you say more?”
They moved paper.
They challenged ideas.
They verbalized just how our wishes impact our commitment to a community, how they make us feel like we belong.
They talked about the fact that individual wishes—me wishes, or genie wishes—as we called them, might make a huge difference to one person, but they would make an even larger difference if we figured out the core of what a wisher wanted and found a way to share it with others. In other words, instead of granting the wish to “have an exciting first period,” by giving donuts, or facilitating a serenade, or planning a crazy staged event for just that one individual student, what would happen if we facilitated a break in the monotony of everyday life for everyone? Would granting that student’s wish, on a larger scale, tip the scales of life for the whole school?
And then we asked, at what point does a wish become too big to matter? At what point is it too small?
“Pull out the slips in the envelope on your table,” I instructed once we laid the work for deeper thinking, and then I shared the tools of a systems thinker, and asked them to consider which approach might benefit them the most as they read through the slips and grouped similar ideas.
“If you can’t schedule it, then it isn’t actionable enough,” I told them, asking them to identify wishes that weren’t specific enough to land on a calendar. “And if you can schedule it, think about the best scale for these wishes and how we might embed them into the school.”
Students grouped and glued and jotted notes, and in the end, when we looked at the groupings and labels they had created, they matched, almost word-for-word, what I jotted on the master envelopes. Without telling them why their slips were split and clustered the way they were, their discussions led them to figure it out.
Ultimately, the bell rang before every wish found a home on a planning list, but the effort to discuss them, unpack them and group them was certainly present. Beyond that, the effort to consider the impact of wishing hovered in the air around us. They knew we hadn’t forgotten the wishes they wished; they knew their wishes mattered enough to fill two whole periods of time.
What they didn’t know was what would happen next.
But if I’m being honest, neither did we. We were only a few steps beyond them, but we knew enough to know something was going to be different if we used their wishes to pave the way.