Open Mind
How some post-it notes and a good metaphor helped 70 middle school teachers
Friends,
How do you convince a room of middle school teachers that a workshop about building relationships with students is worthwhile? And how do you do it when it's a required Friday session after a stressful week, and they're all coming down from a donut-infused sugar high?
That's where I found myself last week. And while I try to keep Still Life and my day job separate, some things I've learned in these letters had a direct impact on inspiring this group of teachers—especially about words and images.
First, some context: During the day, I work at a non-profit focused on positive youth development. We do research, we make workshops and resources, and we find ways to support adults working with young people. Recently, that's meant doing a ton of research on how relationships support the development of young people, and helping adults figure out how to apply this research in their contexts.
But then, workshops don't happen in a vacuum. People are stressed, there are wars and weather events and elections and waves of teacher resignations and all sorts of things that raise the level of anxiety we bring to our work—before we even walk through the door. And then, there's the reputation of professional development: boring, dense, ineffective, unaware....and often required. Great, so: a stressful context, boring required PD, and cheap donuts fuzzing out everyone's brains. What do you do? I tried to use words and images to prepare people for learning and keep the focus on the primary goal: young people themselves.
Let's start with words, specifically metaphors. If you've read Still Life for, I don't know, a week—then you know I like a good metaphor. A good metaphor is a structure for thinking, a way to frame experience. A week earlier, a colleague gave a workshop and a teacher gave this feedback: “I feel like I'm a NASCAR driver, and I was just asked to sit through two hours of driver's ed.” Ouch! See how their expectations framed their experience? It's like the teacher said to themselves, “There's nothing here for me.” In the days after, I kept thinking about that feedback and how to shift adults’ expectations about learning from the very beginning of the workshop. I decided to play with the metaphor, and after I introduced myself I said this:
I know we don't know each other yet. And you might be thinking, “why do I have to be here on a Friday for this required workshop? I feel like I'm a NASCAR driver, and this is driver's ed! Ugh!” Look, I get it. I've been to required workshops before too. They can feel boring, even frustrating. Like some expert is coming in, but they don't know us or our work! Well, I'm here to tell you that yes, you are NASCAR drivers, [pause for dramatic effect], and we are your pit crew.
Where Driver's Ed immediately brings to mind: “basic stuff I already know that someone is making me do and also I hate it here,” Pit Crew brings to mind: “This is a moment where I can slow down, the guy in front is in service to me, and while we're talking about the basics, I actually need them to function, so I'm gonna take what I need out of this so I can get back to work.”
Driver's Ed, Pit Crew. Just a few words, but see how it completely reorients expectations? You could feel the energy shift in the room. While I'll never know for sure if someone was checking out, I emphasized it was their individual choice to view it as Driver’s Ed and not what we intended for our two hours together. Hopefully, they felt a little more relaxed, and they were given some guidance on how they could still learn about the basics of relationships. Just by changing two words.
So that's words. Now let’s talk images. This was a required PD day for teachers, which meant over 1000 students who normally filled the school were missing from the hallways. I needed them to focus on real relationships with students who weren't even in the room, so I had them doodle. At the very beginning, I told them we were about to do the most important activity of the whole workshop, and they only had 30 seconds to complete it: think of a student you care about, and draw their face on their post-it note.
I wish you could see how much fun they had. It immediately brought out a spirit of play. After they doodled, I told them to share more about the student with someone at their table. And then (why not?) I asked the group to introduce me to their students and shout out the students' names at the same time. I have no idea what they said, but that doesn't matter—they did. They thought of a student, drew them, talked about them, and shouted out their name. Instead of focusing only on research or vaguely thinking of classrooms, they used their voices and had conversations and even brought out their playful childlike selves to reinforce that what we were learning was in service of their actual students. Period.
I had them hold onto their doodles, and they carried them from table to table. More than once, I had them look at their doodles again, reminding them to connect national data trends to their specific school. And at the end, I had them come up to a white board and put their student doodles inside a hand-drawn picture frame. Once everyone was done, I turned off the slide deck on the massive screen and stepped to the side so these doodles—these students—were now the center of attention where they belong. We ended the workshop looking at these lovely doodles gathered in one place, and saying out loud together: “We want all of our students to thrive!”
So there you have it—words and images in the support of learning and helping young people grow up. I had a lovely time, and it was a good reminder to me that it doesn’t take a lot to inspire us to learn and work together: Some sharpies and post-it notes. Maybe some black coffee and a good word. A small group of kind people who want to help grow the world and the people who live within it.
Take care,
Michael
P.S. I’m planning on doing some speaking engagements in 2025. I know Still Life readers include teachers, pastors, artists, and leaders, and you’re interested in workshops for your own community on the arts and rehumanizing the world, let’s talk!
“A Mind that Opens Out To Life” by Jawaharlal Nehru Corita Kent quotes the following text in her 1965 artwork “growing up.” (featured above). It was written by the former Prime Minister of India in "For the Children's Number of Shankar's Weekly" (December 3, 1949). I've added the line breaks. We have all this beauty around us and yet we, who are grown-ups, often forget about it and lose ourselves in our offices and imagine that we are doing very important work. I hope you will be more sensible and open your eyes and ears to this beauty and life that surround you. Can you recognize the flowers by their names and the birds by their singing? How easy it is to make friends with them and everything in nature if you go to them affectionately and with friendship. You must have read many fairy stories of long ago. But the world itself is the greatest fairy tale and story of adventure that has ever been written only, we must have eyes to see and ears to hear and a mind that opens out to the life and beauty of the world. Grown-ups have a strange way of putting themselves in compartments and groups. They build up barriers and then they think that those outside their particular barrier are strangers whom they must dislike. There are barriers of religion, caste, of color, of party, of nation, of province, of language, of custom and of wealth and poverty. Thus, they live in prisons of their own making. Fortunately, children do not know much about these barriers which separate. They play or work with one another and it is only when they grow up that they begin to learn about these barriers from their elders. I hope you will take a long time growing up.
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Love this. I only WISH the workshops I teach were mandatory! I can't even get people to show up for some Pit Crew support :(
10 yeses for the approach you took. Such a beautiful combination of choreographed forms.