Don’t go for listening, go for emotion.
For a long time I thought that a class full of kids who were paying attention was the goal. As long as they aren’t talking over me then I’m happy…!
But wanting kids to pay attention is kind of a weak goal. I don’t want students who merely listen to what I’m saying. What I’m saying probably isn’t all that interesting. What I really want is to stir them up to feel something.
Emotion is what leads us, so if I set my target to an emotion rather than “please let them listen to me” I’m already ahead of the game.
The emotion I’m most often going for is excitement.
Excitement is like a flint, and from that place wild fires of learning and inspiration are possible.
The same can’t be said of listening. It’s too passive.
I’m interested in students who are leaning forward, who are interested, who are making connections to their own life and most of all connecting to possibility.
Prime the ideal state, don’t plead for it
The magic trick that gets kids to focus
We’ve all got our favourite version of
You call: “eyes on me”
Kids respond: “Eyes on you!”
I used to make the mistake of only using a focus call when the kids were already wriggly and losing focus.
Recently I’ve been rehearsing the focus call with them while they are still on the ideal learning state.
When they’re focussed, listening and engaged- I’ll do a couple of focus calls and then double down by reaffirming how well they brought their focus back.
That way, when it comes to really needing to bring their attention back, I’m not ‘resorting’ to a focus call, but re-aligning to a previous state we were already at.
Just ask
It’s amazing what you can get by just asking.
I start every session I teach by asking the kids to say hello to me in Te Reo:
“Can I get a “Kia ora Justin?!”
They’ll repeat it- and what’s more they’ll even match my tone exactly.
To make it fun, I’ll add a “Can I get a “You’re such a great singer, Justin!”
Two things are happening here:
- Ask with levity: I’m playful in my request. There’s no real stakes but the opportunity is still there. When there’s a bit of a joke with it, it’s in their best interest to answer because it’s fun to be ‘in on a joke’.
- Ask with direction: In my sessions, we’re signing and speaking in Te Reo. My two asks of them are related: one is in Te Reo and one is about singing. It steers us in the direction of the learning without overtly saying “Here’s what we’re learning today.
If I want to start a session that’s fun and engaging, I just ask.
Loud and proud; strong and wrong
It’s generous to embarrass yourself.
At drama school we’d often get the instruction from our tutors to be “loud and proud, strong and wrong”.
It’s an encouragement to be bold in your failures and loud in your attempts.
If you weren’t committing fully to a scene: “Loud and proud!”
If you were unsure what choice to make in a scene: “Strong and wrong!”
Being lukewarm in your choices as an actor doesn’t help anyone; we need to see clearly where the problem is. Or indeed be blasted away by whats working.
This has served me well in the classroom too.
The years of actor training and rehearsal rooms have conditioned me to put myself out there more than most kids are used to.
I have less rules about how I need to be and I have a very low threshold for trying things out.
Yes, it means I’m often wrong or look a bit silly.
And that’s great. LET me be the ‘wrongest’ in the room.
By modeling ‘loud and proud, strong and wrong’ I want the kids to see how safe they are to try things out. After all, how could they possibly look as silly as THIS guy!?
It’s not about being zany for attention’s sake. Or being weird to be different.
It’s about whole heartedly trying.
“Loud and proud, strong and wrong” is about giving it your best shot.
Because really trying is a whole lot harder than flailing your arms about to be different.
Be bold in your failures and and loud in your attempts.
What do you believe about your students?
Kids live up to what you believe about their identity.
“Noho Rangatira.”
Noho means “to sit” and a rangatira is a highly respected person. It’s my cue for “sit like someone worthy of respect.”
It does two things.
- Reset focus. When the class gets restless, I model the posture, call “Noho Rangatira,” they echo it, and we all settle into an attentive seat. Focus returns.
- Reset me. If I believe they’re not listening, I teach like that—and I lose them. When I believe I’m leading rangatira, I treat them like rangatira, and they rise to it.
I guard that belief. Noho Rangatira re-anchors me in a simple truth: these are young people worthy of my full respect.
When frustration creeps in, I ask:
- What would I need to believe about these kids for them to engage, get curious, and have fun?
Adopt that belief wholeheartedly and watch what happens.
Small talk isn’t small
It can feel like a waste of precious class time to chat with students about their day. We have limited class time so surely it makes sense to just get on with the learning, right?!
One of my favourite ways to start a waiata lesson is to get a sense of what the kids have been up to since I last saw them.
“What have you been learning today?”
“What’s something surprising you could teach me about?!”
“What are your plans for the holidays?”
These seem simple, but hidden beneath these questions is a core Māori value:
Whānaungatanga.
You might notice whanaungatanga has the Māori word for family in it; whānau. It’s all about a building a sense of family. It’s just like how Japanese business people highly value starting with ‘small talk’ before of ‘getting down to business’. I’ve heard a business deal can be completetly ruined if someone doesn’t engage in small talk first; it’s considered rude!
Well, this is similar in the Māori world. It’s not as formal as having a set of questions or steps you need to do to ‘do whānaungatanga’ (can you imagine!?)
It’s really about being human first. You’re meeting a human being who has had a whole day before this moment, they have family, friends, insecurities, hopes- the whole shabang. How wonderful then that whānaungatanga gives us space to honour that.
It doesn’t have to be a therapy session! Just get interested in their reality and let them into yours.
So when I’m with kids I’ll start by treating them like family members I’m curious about. By the way people tend to act like how you treat them. And I want my students to engage with our work together like trusted family members.
It may seem insignificant, but small talk is anything but.
Connect the then to the now
Focussing on the big goal can immobilise me or make me confused and overwhelmed.
Instead, I’m trying to connect it to the action; figure out what the actions are toward a goal.
And every time I feel the looming overwhelm of the goal- I convert it into the action and put all that energy into the laser of focus that comes when you have a specific task.
Reroute the vision of the end to the task at hand and keep doing that over and over again.
Not if; when
The good thing about writing every day (or making anything every day) is that it’s not a matter of if, but when.
Before the commitment to writing every day, I could have said to myself, “If I were to write something today, it might be like this”
“If” and “might” are pretty hypothetical. And if you want to take something seriously you also have to take it out of the hypothetical.
When it’s already a daily occurrence, you will be using the word “when”
“When I write, later I’ll write about that…”
There’s a degree of certainty in that. Certainty is not something we usually have the privilege of in the creative arts. So when it offers itself, I’d suggest you take it.
And it is offering itself, in the form of a practice. Simply decide you will take yourself seriously enough to do your thing every day.
Deciding is (in some ways) the hard part.
I don’t have to expend any mental energy deciding, I already did that a year ago.
I don’t need to waste any energy wondering if I will write. I know I will. So my focus can go to what it is I will write.
AI is the ultimate yes and
I think AI models really great worker behavior.
When I put an I idea in and ask for help it reflects back with enthusiasm and extends my idea. Sometimes the AI will ask me questions to extend my thinking further and it brings it’s own reasearch up under my work to support and expand.
We can steal some of these qualities:
-Accept ideas and offer extensions
-Bring resource, don’t just agree.
-Ask key questions that invite extension and invention.
What’s the principal?
I’m struggling at the moment with a chunk of goal setting. Each time I sit down to do it, I find myself either overwhelmed my the abstractness of the whole, or getting too caught up in a minute step and trying to do that now.
Instead, I’m thinking about principals. These can guide me in various areas.
For instance with my daily film habit, I can just came up with a set of rules that frame the many times I will step toward that goal.
Principals are helpful when theres too many steps or parts to actually plan.
We don’t need to know each bit, only how we plan on approaching them.