Morning Meeting; an essential part of the day

So inspiring! It's hard to decide what I most want to talk about after reading Roxann Kriete's The Morning Meeting Book, a simple title that perfectly describes this text. It is the book for morning meeting and tells you everything you need to know about this daily ritual, including how to introduce it, why it’s important, and tons of sample activities to pull from. Kriete takes the reader by the hand and walks them through the steps of a successful Morning Meeting and how this routine has positively impacted students’ developments through anecdotal examples. I feel like I could write a blog on just each part of the morning meeting routine, but I will do my best to synthesize my circling ideas!

First let me say that in terms of the reality of Morning Meeting in my classroom, this part of the day needs some love. I have so much guilt for the way Morning Meeting has slacked as of late. It's on the schedule every day, but it's meaning has morphed and now describes a kind of academic whole-group lesson. No sign of the fun greetings, the structured share time, or the community building activities, or even the news and announcements morning message chart. When we have time, we like to do some similar types of community building activities, but never in the rigorous, dedicated style outlined in this book. The idea of making Morning Meeting, and greeting our community members, an essential part of the day excites me with its possibilities. The book offers up some fun and quick suggestions for accomplishing simple greetings in the Appendix E (p.156) that I think my kids would love.

The idea of starting something like this at this point in the year also fills me with trepidation. I like that Kriete suggests some ways to introduce greetings and get the possible negative reactions out of the way. I think my kids would like to model the "how nots" but I wouldn't want them to get fixated on the laughs they get when doing it "wrong." I have some real entertainers in my class ;) I think Kriete's suggestion to tell the students why practicing greetings is so important is key here, as student involvement is always a plus. I think my students will be receptive to the idea that "Welcoming each other to our classroom every day is an act of hospitality. The offering of that welcome, one to another, affirms that we are caretakers of each other in that community. Being a host also implies, builds, and strengthens a person's ownership and investment in that place" (Kreite, 2002, p.38). Maybe this small-seeming gesture could help address some of the community issues my co-teacher and I have been seeing, like students not taking responsibility for helping around the classroom or using disrespectful words or tones with each other. Greetings could even be super helpful for kids on the spectrum needing extra practice in common social gestures, or to ELLs for practicing various language structures for meeting friends.

In light of all we're learning in Dr. K's Responsive Student Centered Pedagogy, I'm not so sure about all of the boy/girl suggestions like making students sit boy/girl/boy/girl at the carpet or directing them to give a "cross-circle boy/girl greeting" (Kreite, 2002, p.162). I understand the desire to mix things up and have children greeting different types of friends, but I wouldn't want to do so at the risk of excluding a child of a non-conforming gender identity or reinforcing the assumption that male and female are the only two acceptable identities to choose from and you must be one or the other.

Sharing is also clearly a powerful tool, and one I know my students would love. They already like to bring in things for any reason they can think of, so why not channel this enthusiasm into a format that will help them develop “good oral communication skills—both presentation skills and listening skills” (Kriete, 2002, p.57). I appreciate how Kriete anticipates some of the common issues that could come up, like what I like to call “the endless share.” She addresses this by giving two jobs to the sharer which “include using a voice that is strong and clear and sharing news that is brief and focused” (Kriete, 2002, p.58). I think my students could really benefit from practicing “good questions” as well, which “show a genuine interest in the sharer and her news” and “are often open-ended, requiring more than just a yes-or-no response from the sharer” (Kriete, 2002, p.59). Practicing these types of questions is sure to help my students develop their empathy skills, and is another exercise excellent for students on the spectrum.

Group Activity scares me a little bit. SO much potential for energy levels to get out of hand, but I suppose the idea is to develop skills in managing that energy in a productive way; to be “playful or enthusiastic without being silly” (Kriete, 2002, p.83). For my group of learners, taking care in the introduction phase will be crucial. As mentioned earlier, I have a few students who are accomplished entertainers, but can sometimes put entertaining peers above the learning goals of an engagement or activity. Kriete makes says it best when she explains “while play can enhance learning, silliness is distracting and gets in the way of group engagement” (Kriete, 2002, p.84). I’m glad Kriete offers some suggestions on what to do if the silliness seems out of hand, such as taking particular students aside “to speak to them individually to say what you notice and ask them to think of ways they can help Group Activity work better” (Kriete, 2002, p.84). I like the phrasing of this, which puts the responsibility back on to the student, and lets him or her know that Group Activity belongs to the students and requires their meaningful participation to work.

News and Announcements were something we used to do every day at the beginning of the year. The example chart on page 90 looks exactly like the morning messages we used to share with our class, but somewhere along the way the tradition fell off and we stopped engaging in this part of our morning ritual. I think it was partly to do with running out of chart paper, snow days disrupting our routines and rituals, and that end-of-year feeling of needing to play catch up with every available moment. In this pressure-filled time of year, it’s almost painful to see any of your valuable instruction time run off into seemingly “unessential” moments.

I love the sample messages on page 211 that leave a space for students to respond to a question. In my classroom we’ve done something very similar where they respond on sticky notes and stick it on the message chart. Sometimes the sticky notes fall off, particularly over time and rustling of pages, and also it uses a lot of sticky notes! If they write it directly on the chart, it’s there to stay, and it really makes the chart and the message on it a more truly collaborative engagement. I also have several students in my class who worry a lot about what is coming in the course of the day. They ask us often about what is next, or if ___ is happening today. While we have a schedule for them to refer to, it’s not very detailed. I thought of these students in particular when I read one of the highlights of news announcements is how they contribute “to students’ sense of safety and being cared for by letting them know that the teacher has prepared for the day and is ready for them” (Kriete, 2002, p.96). If we put aside this time to give the students some details about what’s coming in their day, perhaps they can relax and be confident that we have thought the day out and will not let them miss anything. Reading this chapter makes me want to bring back the messages with fresh gusto. I need to be reminded that this part of the day is far from “unessential” as it “develops and reinforces language, math, and other skills in a meaningful and interactive way” (Kriete, 2002, p.92).

Although it is late in the year, I think my class has a lot to gain from a rebirth in our morning meeting routines. There are just so many benefits in doing Morning Meeting RIGHT: from reinforcing academic concepts, to providing a much needed safe space to work on budding social skills. It’s also a great place for the teacher to practice assuming positive intent a la Becky Bailey, like when Kriete asserts “we must give our students real responsibility in Morning Meeting; we must believe that they can be trusted and will be successful in meeting the expectations we hold” (Kriete, 2002, p.23). While in my current situation and at this point in the year, I can’t swear I will take on the full Morning Meeting program as outlined in the book, but I can do much better, and aim to sharpen my facilitation skills for a fresh Morning Meeting filled start to next year!