Research tells us that awe increases motivation and connection to learning, enhances critical thinking and careful information processing, encourages empathy and prosocial behavior, and supports creativity. What’s the plan for teachers and students first days of school? Are you more likely to hear ‘wow” and “awe” or “ Oh, no.” Explore some possibilities.
Find Steve’s book “WOW! Adding Pizzazz to Teaching and Learning, Second Edition” here.
Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:00:29.560] – Steve
Start the school year with awe, wonder, and curiosity. Should we be looking to generate awe, wonder, and curiosity as the school year begins? Consider these comments from the International Baccalaureate website. Awe reduces stress, increases focus, and supports both physical and emotional health. It quiets the brain’s default mode network where self-focused thought lives, helping students become more open, attentive, and collaborative. In practical terms, awe increases motivation and connection to learning, enhances critical thinking and careful information processing, encourages empathy and prosocial behavior, supports creativity, especially in problem solving. Awe helps learners move from surface knowledge to deeper understanding. Students become more curious, reflective, caring, and open-minded when they’re inspired by something bigger than themselves. That sounds to me like a pretty good payoff for investing the effort. Encountering something completely unexpected or novel can lead to awe. The element of surprise or encountering the unfamiliar can provoke a sense of wonder. Consider what students frequently find at the start of a school year or a new course of study. Are they more likely to be responding with, “Wow!” awe or more likely with, “Oh, no.” What if we saved the handbook, the syllabus, and the class rules to at least the second day?
[00:02:25.940] – Steve
I was surprised several years back when my niece was entering middle school in grade 6 to find that her year started with a three-day overnight camping trip. I quickly realized the power of starting the year with what we might call a celebration that in most schools occurs at the end of the year. This opportunity for awe experiences in the first week of school can impact relationships, expectations, and motivation across the school year. The Children’s School in Atlanta, Georgia, has a program that illustrates these opportunities for awe that can build social bonds and collaboration. At their school, fourth graders begin the year with a two-night camping trip to Black Rock Mountain State Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Students focus on developing camping and organizational skills by planning activities, developing menus, cooking meals, and washing their dishes. Lots of chances to experience awe. Before reading about awe, I called these “wow experiences.” Here’s some examples.
[00:03:41.700] – Steve [Clip]
Kids ought to head home from that first day of school with a sense of wow. Over the years, I’ve collected examples. I believe science teachers may have it the easiest. First day of school, they’re going to blow something up and all the kids are wowed. I met a high school teacher who, on the first day of school, shows up not only in costume, but in character of the lead in the novel that the kids are going to be reading. I met a great fourth-grade teacher, and she came into the school on the first day of school, she had the secretary deliver a gift-wrapped box to her classroom. It was a rather large box, a big bow on it, a letter attached. She opened it up and she read read the card out to the kids, and the card said, “This is a gift to the fourth grade students to be opened as soon as you know the volume of the box.” Then, she said to the kids, “Does anybody know what volume is?” None of the kids knew. She said, “Well, I think it’s math.” The kids are all flipping through their math books, and they find the formula, and she puts that up.
[00:04:51.120] – Steve [Clip]
Now they have to do measurement. Then when they do measurement, they found fractions. It took almost three weeks for the kids. Every day, she’d take the box and put it back up on the shelf. The next day, the kids would come in and say, “Can we do math now?” She’d bring the box back out, and the kids would work on it. Finally, there came the day that the kids had figured out the volume of the box, and they had a big celebration. They opened it up, and inside the box was a giant plastic bag filled with candy, a long string of it, just round and round and round and round. It was all tight with a big bow, and it said, written on a card on the bow, “When you can divide me evenly, you can eat me.” Here’s the best part of that story was months later, at Christmas time, the kids left a present on the teacher’s desk, all gift-wrapped. When she went to open it, the whole class yelled out, “You can’t open it until you tell us the volume of the box!” I want to encourage you at this time of the year to be thinking about, do you have a wow planned for your kids to kick off that opening day of school?
[00:05:59.260] – Steve [Clip]
I worked with a high school in New Jersey, and nearly 90% of the teachers agreed to open school with a wow activity in their classrooms on that first day. The principal reported back to me that he received phone calls from parents who couldn’t believe the way that their high school students came home from that first day of school.
[00:06:30.000] – Steve [Clip]
Part of the positive emotional impact of providing wow experiences for our learners is that they tap our positive emotions, which add to the positiveness of the overall experience. Students’ first experiences with a teacher can impact the learning days that follow. This is a payoff worth the effort.
[00:06:58.960] – Steve
Just as teachers plan for generating awe, wonder, and curiosity, instructional coaches and administrators should be doing the same thing. In my book, “Wow: Adding Pizzazz to Teaching and Learning,” I include an example of how a principal delivered a wow that generated awe for her teachers. As teachers approach the school on the first day back, they found a long red carpet on the walkway from the parking lot to the school entrance. As the staff neared the entrance, they found braided velvet rope barriers on brass poles guiding them in, reminiscent of the Academy Awards. Behind the braided rope barriers were parents and students dressed as gaudy tourist who reacted as if the teachers were celebrities. They clicked cameras like paparazzi, and they asked for photographs with screams and swoons. The principal debriefed the impact of the experience with teachers and then had the staff collaborate on designing wow moments for the opening day with students. I found another example from an administrator and how he created an awe experience for teachers. At the beginning of a staff meeting, the staff found the documentary, March of the Penguins, playing on a large screen as they poured their coffee and selected snacks.
[00:08:32.520] – Steve
When everyone was seated and watching the video, in walked two live penguins, followed by a specialist from the zoo. The video stopped, and as the penguins pranced around the room, the speaker gave a short lesson about penguins, focusing on their ability to cope with changing conditions in their environment. As the speaker’s comments ended and the penguins followed him out, the principal started his conversation with staff, focusing on the changes that they and their students would be addressing in the coming year. What a great example showing teachers the impact of how wow and awe can focus attention for listening and learning. Sometimes students wow their teacher. Remember the example of the teacher who started the year with the gift-wrapped box box and the need for students to calculate the volume? She shared with me that at the holiday party in December, she was presented a gift-wrapped box from the students. As she reached to open the bow, the students yelled out, “You need to figure the volume of the box!” The students were prepared to check her calculations. In this case, wow and awe had created community. School is certainly hard work, requiring a lot of focused attention for both students and educators.
[00:10:07.420] – Steve
Let’s generate opportunities for awe and wonder, wow, and curiosity as the year Americans, and again, as frequently as we can as the year progresses. As I quoted from that IB website, awe can reduce stress, increase focus, and support both physical physical and emotional health. There’s a payoff of people becoming more open, attentive, and collaborative, something we need for our students and for our educators. I’d love to hear your strategies for increasing awe, wonder, and curiosity. Drop me a note at barkleypd.com. Here’s wishing you an awe-filled year. Thanks for listening.
[00:11:04.640] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
