In a lot of the training for directing Challenge, there is a metaphor used that we as directors need to welcome our students to the table and invite them to feast. And that sounds positively lovely. I love to think about the time we spend in conversation as a feast.
But in real life, it can be difficult to put that into practice. In fact, in Challenge A and B, I’m not so sure I did a great job of it. I’ve continued to learn and I began making changes in Challenge 1 and 2 that have greatly improved this idea of welcoming students to the table. Here are some ideas of things that have worked for us.
- A quote board.
Personally, I like this one. I’ve also bought lots of extra letters, like this set, so that I can pre-pack the letters I need for each week. I write the quote on a sandwich bag and label it with the week it is for, tuck all the letters inside and then I can grab and go, and put the board together while I’m sitting somewhere waiting on my children at whatever activity they have that day.
In Challenge 1, all my quotes were from Shakespeare. In Challenge 2, the quote was always from the book we had been reading that week. In Challenge 3, I plan to do quotes from the books I’ve been reading for grad school.
I place my quote board near the entrance to the classroom so that they see it. It often sparks conversation. “What book is that quote from?” or “I preferred this other quote from that book.” It gets their brains going before we even begin.
2. A message and meme center.
For a very brief time, we had a host church that gave me my own classroom. No one else was using it at all, and I had a key and could lock it. For that brief time, I had a bulletin board that I got to decorate like a “real” teacher. I loved it. When the church shut down due to Covid and we had to find a new host, I lost my bulletin board. But I remembered I still had my portable white board from back in the days of tutoring Foundations. So, I turned it into a message center. It was always filled with memes to draw the students in, but once they were there, it offered relevant information about the day ahead and also about the weeks ahead. Our school year calendar was posted, and any important upcoming due dates were there. If someone was assigned to lead a strand, that was noted. I also set this up on a table near the door so it would be seen. This really helped the kids stay on top of what was going on.
3. Set a schedule for the day.
There is nothing I hate more than walking into a room where I know I will be for several hours and I do not know the agenda. If I hate it, I’m sure the students do too. So I have committed to always, ALWAYS having a printed version of our schedule on our message center and I keep a copy in front of me. I have noticed far less stress when the kids know what to expect when they walk through the door. Sometimes they will give input, “Next week can we just get debate over with first?” and I try to respect those requests when I can.
Pre-printing it is important to me. I think it shows the kids that I have put some thought and effort into my plans and I am committed to this day and respecting their time.
And yes, of course there are days we do not stay on schedule. Sometimes our conversation in Expo is so incredible, none of us want to jump to research. And I will say, “It’s time to switch, but if you want to keep going, we can give this a few more minutes.” Sometimes they say “Yes, please!” and sometimes they look around and admit, “Actually, that was pretty much all I had left to say.”
4. Assigned seats.
Eek. This one will straight up tick off your students at first. Tough. I found after A and B that my students always sat in the same places. Which meant that when I stood in front of the room and looked straight back, I was always looking at the same face. Not good. Also, they needed to sit next to different people all the time. It’s just good for them to not get in a rut of only sitting with and talking with one person.
I knew that winning them over would be difficult. I decided to make it fun. On the first day of Challenge 1 and again for Challenge 2, I gave them 30 getting to know you questions. I searched the internet for random questions to ask and compiled a different list for each year. It had things like “What is your favorite cookie?” “What is your favorite Christmas movie?” “What’s the furthest you’ve ever traveled?” And then I would use that info to create a seating chart. For those three questions, I would sort like this. For cookies, I looked up each cookie and found out how many calories it has. Then I sat them in order of highest calorie cookie to lowest. For Christmas movie, I looked up the year it was released and sat them in order of the age of the movies. For travel, I looked up the miles from our community meeting location and sat them in order of miles traveled. Every week, they would come in and find their name card at their seat based on an answer to a question. Inevitably, every week, they would ask, “What was the question this week?” and then start discussing the answer with whoever they were sitting next to that week. This gave them not only the opportunity to sit next to someone new, but to have something to talk about with that person so they could get to know someone a little better. They love it now. I have won them over.
The saddest thing is that I will have a small class in Challenge 3, and I might not really need assigned seats. I haven’t decided yet.
5. Catechisms
Catechisms are new to me. I learned about them reading Something They Will Not Forget by Joshua Gibbs. But I fell in love. Having a morning catechism as well as one for each strand helps get their brains going and helps make the transition from one topic to another go much smoother. I have so much more to say about catechisms, but this is already getting far too long. I’ll leave it at “READ THAT BOOK!” for now.