And that’s not so side of a note because when I teach in classrooms I am in the real world. The school is important because it serves as a social institution. But we tend to slip into thinking that the intention of schooling––regardless of level––is to prepare students for socialization. Our thoughts turn to actions. We then operate contingently on student production as it relates to student potential. We approach education––teaching and learning––as practice for the real game. When, in fact, teaching and learning is the real game.  

And what’s more troubling is that it is our ideas surrounding the dichotomy of student production and student potential that determines everything inside of schools. From class structure, to the modes of teaching, to the things and actions and the whats and the who’s that are valued, to value itself. Because we frame school as a preparation ground for future living, we lose the ability to ground the actual potential of learning in real time.  

I know it’s important for educators to focus on details. Equally valuable is to teach in a way that gives students the best opportunities for success––both in the moment and moving forward. But when we get lost inside of the building and lose sight of the outside world, we cannot slip into thinking that we are actually outside of reality. We are experiencing reality: continuously reconstructing its meaning from class period to class period. 

Essentially, when we teach it is important to keep in mind that we are doing so in a space that does not exist outside of the real world. Therefore, our purpose as educators––so called conduits of information and knowledge––is to value the process as much as we value the product.

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Teaching is an act. In the purest sense of what that word means as a verb. To teach is to be compelled to take action. To move. To react. To do something. Teaching is also an act in the purest sense of that word as a noun. An action. A performance. 

This is why teaching is aptly referred to as a calling. That is why when teachers talk to other teachers whom they haven’t seen in a while they ask, “what role are you in this year?” It is difficult to tease out where teaching starts and performance stops or vice versa. But understanding that this line exists is one of the most important qualities a teacher can have. Knowing that there is a line, however hazy it may become, is vital in knowing thyself. 

When a teacher truly knows themself, they are able to pursue the act of teaching in its truest sense. More simply, a teacher who is authentic to themselves takes action––teaches––in a way that can never be misconstrued as a charade. Authenticity, from a teacher, leaves little room for posturing for the sake of posturing. Authenticity is a quality that creates classrooms brimming with engagement, regardless of the activity. It creates conversations that lead to real learning within, and beyond, the content. The act of teaching through a real and authentic lens fosters rich classroom experiences that allow students to explore their own truths. Or at least parts of them. 

Part of me learning how to teach required a willingness and preparedness to learn myself. Examining how I’ve become the way I am. Reflecting on how my school experiences affect how I now intersect with school. Excavating my truths, worldviews, biases, and all things in between to be better in my practice of teaching. This is an ongoing process. Like the act of teaching itself. 

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That other bell, the one that marked the end of transition where kids needed to be seated in classrooms for afternoon attendance was like forty-two, forty-three seconds away. I could tell. I worked at the same school, in the same building for six years. After six years there are things like the timing of bells that have an innate way of growing into a teacher’s timing and expectations. Into a teacher’s values. Bells have become my self-preservation. Only in between those bells, we allow a slice of ourselves to exist. 

Laila understood this about me as she walked towards my classroom after that first bell rang. I heard you! My, my, my. That, that, that. She was near the door with thirty-one seconds left before that second bell rang. That, that, that. Theirs, theirs, theirs. She also has learned this about school too. We, me, them, that, theirs…we all tell them their smart if and when they show us that they know that. Laila knows that. 

She said, “I’m not involved in that, Mr. Morris…That’s not me this time.”

This time. What does this time mean at the end of confessional sentences coming out of a 14-year-old girl’s mouth when speaking about friends, students, coming back from lunch and singing songs with less than 41 seconds until they’re supposed to be seated at their desks? Laila arrived at the doorway nine paces before her singing friends. She knew how to do that. I know that she knows that I know she’s learned a thing or two about school. 

“Did you go out to lunch with them, Laila?” I didn’t even really look at her when I asked her. I looked at her when she started to respond. “Yeah, of course. You know that, Mr. Morris. We go out to lunch together. Everyday.” She didn’t look at me when she answered. We both were watching her friends happily singing away while unlocking their locks to their lockers. That second bell rang. They were still singing. We were still staring. “Laila, get into the classroom. The second bell rang. I’m ‘bout to take attendance.”

“Okay. Mr. Morris.”

There’s an immeasurable thing that occurs in between remembering and writing memories down. A similar gap occurs when teaching and remembering how to teach. An equivalent gap happens to kids who understand the difference between acting like kids and performing like students in front of teachers. Some students grapple with it and get it on the spot. Some kids never get it and only realize it after when they are on porches with friends, half drunk, talking about that time Mr. SoAndSo said this or did that. Some just say, “I know, Mr. Morris” to the teacher in a way that makes their teacher know that they know. Those kids are smart. I like to think that some of those other kids know both ends of that dichotomy and come back from lunch singing songs because they know. Because they know, too. So they don’t give or break or bend. In a good way. Because they know. Those kids are smart, too.

For right now I think Laila is smarter than Shari, Felicia, and Nasir. But I don’t know. I know that they’ve learned and thought about ways to break or bend. But, I do know them. The same way Laila thinks she knows me enough to dissociate herself with her friends and pronounce to her teacher that she isn’t them. I think I know her well. Shari, Felecia, and Nasir too. But I help her more, between those bells, because I know her more and I think she knows me better than those other kids actually know me. Because I know that teaching comes down to bending, breaking and re-molding. I mean, they came back singing after lunch. Knowing. Not broken. Never bending. But I wanted to tell Laila that there ain’t nothing wrong with singing after a lunch and coming back into a building still singing. Unmoulded in a way. Adults never do that. I really sometimes deep down want to do that. But I never do. I don’t know if she know that. I wonder if those three other kids, who came back singing, know that better. Never knowing that they’ll never know what it means to break.

I never actually know so I never actually do because I’ve learned how to live in between those bells. That’s what I’ve been taught. That’s how I learned how to teach. The bells alone ring so loud that I automatically know what they are supposed to mean. Sometimes I forget what it means to live outside of them when I am immersed inside of them every day, all day, until they stop ringing. To still be still, and moving flexibly at the same time. Laila told me, without telling me, she heard them. Those other kids told me the same thing. But they didn’t say it to my face. They told me another way. They sang. They sang through those bells. And kept singing after those seconds after the bell rang silent. And then they stopped singing. They knew it was time for afternoon attendance. They came into class. They knew I heard them so I could never mark them not there. They’re there. All of them. I call names and say, “when you hear your name, say here.” They all do. I have to decide on what I should listen to more. 

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In teacher’s college, I was one of four Black student-teachers in a cohort of sixty. When tasked with reflecting on various points of our school experiences, I observed that I had little in common with almost all the other folks who also wanted to become educators. And if I––a grown man who graduated from similar institutions and pursued parallel career paths––had little in common with these fellow teachers, how did most of the students who grew up in lower socio-economic environments feel? 

Most of my friends hated most parts of school. My little brother was kicked out of high school in the tenth grade. My dad never showed up to one parent-teacher meeting. School seemed to be a thing that was imposed on Black boys like me. Something we were compelled to participate in. Something we had to comply with. The deeper I reflected, the closer I felt like I was getting to some of the core reasons why school felt so distant for students like I once was.

When I was a student, it always felt like teachers didn’t really invest themselves in who I was beyond what I could produce on tests and assignments. I was there, in their classrooms, and was treated as if my life in that specific moment represented the complete capsule of my hopes and potential. Nothing beyond the information as it pertained to the curriculum was poured into me. Nothing aside from the black and white academics of that day was inquired about me. I sat at the back of the classroom and merely existed. Only to be monitored if I stepped outside the lines of acceptability––of their acceptability. And when I occasionally did, I was chastised. That was the only time I was implored to “do better”.

Despite what I looked like on the outside, to the outside world, I knew that if I didn’t help challenge and shatter stereotypes, Black boys that looked like the younger versions of myself would look at school the same way my friends and my brother did––the cycle would continue. They had to see men like me exist in roles that extended beyond basketball courts and rap videos. I had to meet them where they were at while fostering opportunities for them to think about who, exactly, they were. I knew that would be key to keeping students who looked like me engaged in the school buildings that never made any attempts to represent their wholeness. 

I learned three keys along the way. First was the reality that if we want students who ostensibly don’t align with the “universal student” then the onus is not on them, but on us, as teachers, to provide a learning environment where they feel welcomed, validated, and brilliant. Second was the reality that cultivating an equity-centered environment starts way before and many times in between any curriculum delivery. Third was that in order to create such an environment teachers would need to be themselves. 

I’ll admit, the aphorism, “be yourself,” is an overused and vague platitude. It is actually dangerous if merely taken at face value. It has the potential to inspire adults to think that their views and opinions are infallible. The saying subtly encourages teachers to teach from a “holier-than-thou” pedestal. But, by “being yourself”, I mean enter your teaching space as close to the most unbridled version of yourself in order to open up the floodgates for your students to enter as their most unbridled self. That’s where reflection ultimately occurs. I mean being authentic in your relationships with the children you are charged with teaching but I also mean rigorously reflecting on your shortcomings or blindspots as a person, and by extension, an educator.

Reflection, through the lens of continuous learning, protected my students from me. It curates a space where students feel safe in being themselves; willing to talk about their likes and dislikes with the content, the way it’s been taught to them, and their overall observations about schooling. It allowed both them and myself to grow. And to commit to continuous growth. By virtue of continuous reflection. 

Growth through the process of reflection is what we need to emphasize in our education circles. That there can’t be taught through a textbook, it can’t be photocopied onto a worksheet, it can’t be read in a teaching guide. It is only begot through the essence of learning itself––moving forward and occasionally taking pauses to look in the mirror. And it is the key to equity driven pedagogy, anti-racist teaching, and abolishing the opportunity gaps we still face today. We just need to look in the mirror every now and then.       

[A longer version of this blog was previously published at The Digital Pedagogy Lab]

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Part of why defining meaningful work is such a deeply layered question is because of everything it implies. And, a few things it may not include. Because of that, I don’t think we can come up with a singular definition of meaningful work. There are certain aspects of work that have meaning and always will. A task that applies to the development of a universal skill set that we all need can be deemed as meaningful. Teaching students the tenants of persuasion and then tasking them with a persuasive essay is meaningful, insofar as it creates an opportunity for students to foster their ability to negotiate and communicate; two things that 99% of people utilize in life. But is that persuasive essay task meaningful? I don’t have the answer because by virtue of thinking the opposite, I can rationalize flaws. Albeit, small ones that have more to do with the delivery and the direction of a task like that – but they still exist. 

Much of my shying away from the idea of a utilitarian ideal for meaningful work inside of a classroom relates to how meaningfulness often stitches itself to engagement. Does work need to be engaging for it to be meaningful? We know not everything is going to engage everyone. I’m not arguing that fact. What I am trying to tease out is the balance between meaning, engagement, motivation and mandated learning. I have to follow curriculum guidelines. I also have flexibility. So how do I juxtapose all four of those important elements into “work”?

Or maybe meaningful work drives at a more pressing question. That is, how do you teach a student to be intrinsically motivated? One of my students provided an analogy to my original question on my Google classroom. She said that she finds work meaningful because she wants to be engaged, other students try to be engaged because they know it is important but may not find meaning, and yet some don’t find meaning and don’t care to be engaged. Firstly, I thought that a 7th grader breaking the question down like that was pure brilliance. Secondly, I thought about a new way of defining meaningful work. Work that overlaps with real life skills by pulling on individual talents and interests. It may be a little too verbose right now but I am working with that definition in light of figuring out how to best teach my students in these tough times. I am asking myself that because it is hard to learn new things online and then figure out a way to share them with my class. In addition to staying on top of delivering feedback so that they stay engaged and find meaning in the work they do. I want to give work that leaves students feeling satisfied when they complete it (beyond the fact that they feel satisfied by simply completing it). I want them to see purpose in the things they are doing during their emergency education experience. I struggle when grappling with this because I feel like the “work” I do inside my physical classroom is more meaningful than any content I have ever dolled out. But maybe my wants will lead me to my answers in regards to giving my students meaningful work.   

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1. Social Distancing

Now, I have been practicing this for a long, long time. My nature is to be more reclusive and take things in rather than fill my daily schedule with things that occupy my boredom. Regardless of the brand of person you are and how inclined or acidic you may be to this new trend of social invited-ness, social distancing may be the cop-out in education, especially with teachers, for their unwillingness to get “close” to their students. We don’t need contact to show love, but there are millions of students every year that needed that one teacher who showed love in a physical form; whether it was their 2nd grade teacher giving them a hug or their 8th grade teacher dappin’ them up after a good job. I fear this may all be lost, depending on how severe the finality of this contagion takes us. 

2. Online Learning

This subject has already been tossed around for the last few years. After this pandemic, the advocation for this change to schooling will only get stronger. So a few words to the wise – teachers: prepare yourselves to become two-dimensional; students: prepare for new, and easier, ways to cheat. Unless studied and subsequently implemented after scaffolded testing measures, online learning, as a general practice for academic accreditation, will not work. In 50 years, it’ll be kosher. Rushing to it in the next decade? Bad, bad idea. 

3. Self-Isolation

It is absolutely imperative to take this precaution while this pandemic unfolds all around us. But this is the 90-degree angle on the already slippery slide of social networking. We were already pulsing towards a negative charge of this through cyberbullying, group chats, and the splurge of social media apps that foster an appreciation for distance and voyeurism rather than collaboration. The smoke and mirrors of the infinite benefits of social networking is finally clearing up. The shit has indeed hit the fan. Although this is crucial for global general health, I cannot see any upside to the experience youth are going through unless we make direct changes to the curriculum we teach them. We are in desperate need for self-introspection. Judging by my social media, I’m not sure that this brand of imposed self-isolation is getting us there. 

4. Quarantine

When 9-11 happened, western demography woke up. What arose directly from that – Islamophobia. We took an event that could have drastically changed our philosophical interpretations of how commerce, corporatism, capitalism and religion intertwined, and instead, focused on the “group” that caused the travesty. Groups don’t cause shit. Evil people cause evil things. Trump calling this the, “Chinese Virus” and a storm of people online defending his semantics … I guess they were right: racism doesn’t die, it just remolds and revamps and recreates itself. “Quarantine” looks like an extension of the lexicon of racism that we are struggling to get away from. If I could place a prophetic bet, I would gamble on the fact that “quarantine” will be part of our racist lexicon under the trope of incendiary semantics that have never ever left our western worlds. 

5. Super skepticism

Hopefully we combine enough collective common sense to make this a positive thing that will happen post the coronavirus pandemic. The second and third amendments are starting to make a little more sense to the public. Aside from political fandangling, and despite our quasi “woke” society, general skepticism of Power is generally good for society. There is a thin line when dealing with the omniscient catalog of Google: it leads some people to merely question why cars still need gasoline while others construct tin hats and cut off their 5G WiFi packages. Balance is key. Subsequently, everyone’s ideas are valuable to an extent (hence, why I think Twitter is the most valuable social media tool, but they, or we, have to figure out how to make it more serviceably functional). Super skepticism will happen and “super skeptics” will replace the now irrelevant “emo’s”. This will be a “thing” for sure. 

There are a lot of things that will change after coronavirus. Maybe it’s because I am a teacher, but I am most worried about the impact this pandemic will have on education. I would hope that we will take this time to recenter ourselves, every single person. Consider what is important, what is straight flatulence, and look beyond both the smoke and the mirror. Because if we don’t, the inevitable next time will have us digging out of a deeper psychological, philosophical, and curative hole. 

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Nevertheless, …

Back in the springtime, a real-life teaching colleague and also Twitter friend, Will Gourley, tagged me in a tweet and suggested that I apply for the TEDx event that was coming to Kitchener in the fall. It was around the time of year that most teachers are thinking about two things: making sure they cover enough of the curriculum to feel satisfied with their year and report cards. Needless to say, although I was a huge fan of Ted Talks and had hoped to be on that circular red rug at some point in my career, doing a TED talk wasn’t on my list of most pressing obligations. So when I had the time and mental energy, I put together and submitted a proposal for a talk and went back to my daily preoccupations with finishing out a strong sixth year as a teacher. I had almost forgotten about my application until I got an email on a warm June day stating that I had been accepted. What followed was a list of dates and deadlines that concerned how the process of preparing a talk would ensue and final congratulations. I was geeked! Now, I had to actually think about what I was going to say.

The school year ended and the summer started. I had done a few speeches, seminars, panels, and even a keynote before, but the gravity of knowing that I would be on the TED stage forced me to alter my habitually-procrastinating self into some type of action. In early June, I opened my Mac and started on my talk from the very beginning. The directions from the organizers were necessarily well-articulated; they told us not to come unprepared and insisted on dates for outlines, drafts, and videos of rehearsals. In essence, they acted like that one teacher you always hated because he was so demanding but secretly you were delighted that you had him because you knew he would not let you slack. I hammered out my first draft and sent it off. The feedback: too long, too all over the place, and just what exactly are you talking about?

To be honest, I haven’t gotten much feedback as a writer aside from most of my friends and work colleagues acknowledging that they actually read my stuff and liked it. Even the few articles that I’ve written for magazines, or outlines for keynotes that I was asked to do, came back with only minimal changes from those people in charge. With the feedback that I got from the TED organizers, I went back to the drawing board and cut, changed, altered, and even re-wrote portions of my talk until I felt that both they and I would be happy with it. It took five drafts but I had it under ten minutes, a mark that I wanted to attain and I felt like it had just enough meaning and just enough engagement to keep an audience wrapped. Yeah, five drafts. I am a one-take kind of guy, so five drafts from me must have indicated that I was taking this thing very, very seriously. But, I was off for the summer and I like to spend my time writing, so that was the easy part. Now, I had to master my written word into a spoken one.

I don’t think I had ever consciously memorized anything in my life. I mean, I can recite at least 100 rap songs word for word, but my automaticity of them came from listening to them over and over and over and not necessarily trying to learn them. I thought this tactic would work so I recorded my talk and listened to it every day. The 10 seconds short of ten minutes monologue was replayed into my ears through my headphones every time I went to the gym, went for a jog, washed the dishes, or mowed the lawn. I tried listening to it when I went to sleep and while I was brushing my teeth in the morning. After a few days of this, I had just about the first two lines memorized. This was August. School was about to start and I knew that my time spent on this project would soon become limited as the school year quickly approached. I needed a new tactic.

I decided to fall back upon the strategy I used to get me through high school and much of university. My greatly astigmatic photographic memory. I would read a paragraph off of my computer, go to another room in my house, and recite it until I messed up. I repeated this over again until I could spit out the paragraph that I blurredly saw in my head, without any mistakes, at least 5 times. And then it was on to the next paragraph, all starting from the very beginning. It took me about ten odd days to memorize the entire ten-minute talk and as I finally got my brain wrapped around it, I began to rehearse in front of friends. They would offer advice and I would change little things here and there. By the time September rolled around, I was back preparing for year seven as a teacher. I spent an hour or so each evening working on my talk and getting it into the deep crevasses of my brain where the “Happy Birthday Song” and 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” hook resided (you see what I did there…). Of course, September flew by and I was with three friends driving out to Kitchener to deliver my speech. Thankfully, I don’t have any overt markers of anxiety, like sweating or a dry mouth. Rather, when I get nervous, I yawn. I had a great sleep the night before I was set to give my talk but I was yawning the whole dang drive from Toronto to Kitchener…

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“Um. Meeting? Meeting. Hmm, about what?” Whispers in my brain so loud he could probably read the confusion on my face. Thankfully the purpose for the upcoming meeting became evident over the course of our short convo. “Ah shoot, he probably did read it on my face!”

“Oh yeah. Absolutely.” I had been teaching literary devices to my seventh graders so some real-life examples of hyperboles were, at least, one thing fresh on my brain.

I spent the weekend making sure my assessment records and day plans were up to date. I had already been playing with some thoughts for a new lesson that would begin a new group project for my history class. I figured I would take this opportunity to get back into teachers’ college mode and really write it up sufficiently. As planned, we had our pre-observation meeting on Monday and everything was kosher. I walked out of the meeting eager to have my boss watch me “do work”; but I can’t lie, I also felt a slight tinge of anxiety.

Not serious anxiety, I have always been confident in my abilities to educate. Give me a skill that you want a class to learn, I’ll arm up and make sure that skill gets “learnt”, my friend. But that insidious subconscious that is ample in us teachers always manages to start turning when one has to teach under the microscope.

Two days before my lesson, I touched it up and tweaked it over and over. I considered changing the lesson entirely. Like all the way entirely, thinking that maybe a math lesson would be better to “perform” under the microscope than a history lesson. Math is numbers, three-part lessons mixed with “minds on” catchy hooks and learning consolidation; all Board issue propaganda. I could robotically go through the paces and have my principal soak it all in. Proving that I am well-aligned with cutting edge pedagogy could be much easier done through teaching about ratios than about racism (which played a major part in my history lesson). But my style has always been somewhere closer to the point of to-hell-with-it, so I stuck to my guns and hoped (maybe I even prayed, just saying), that my kids would be in the mood to actually get into a deep discussion on the day my boss was in attendance.

The day came for my performance review. My principal greeted the students, made some small talk with a few kids, and found an unassuming seat somewhere in my classroom.

Lights, camera, action.

The full-on Mr. Morris came out. Probing my students to dig deeper into the complexities of what I was trying to bring out. I made sure that every last one of my students was engaged with the flow of what we were embarking on. Told the quiet kids to speak up, called on kids who hadn’t strung more than two sentences together all year, pushed the group intellectually, and kept them engaged.

Whoa…I am feeling myself too much right now. Re-read the last paragraph and paraphrase with full-on criticism. I mean, I kinda maybe did all that. What I did do was “teach” harder than I usually do.

Many in education feel that teacher performance measures are a prime example of the bureaucracy of contemporary education. In most school boards, your evaluation is either pass or fail. And like most bureaucracies, a fail means more paperwork for everyone involved. Good teachers don’t get paid more than bad ones, unions cover our ass; it is a trial in futility. While I agree with some of that, experiencing the teacher evaluation process for the first time since my first year (where I felt like I literally didn’t know what the hell I was doing) has given me some added insight on how and why assessing teacher performance is actually a good thing.

Beyond the intrinsic drive that compels many to be good teachers, what else forces us to evaluate our methods of teaching and competencies for the craft? I used the opportunity to test out a new lesson. Did I make mistakes? For sure. Can I keep a file labeled “TPA”, let it gather dust, and pull it out the next time a principal decides to assess my practice? Absolutely. Cynically speaking, I would not be wrong for this, either. But, did I teach to my “full potential” while retrospectively realizing that if I do that more often, despite the energy it takes, it makes for better learning? Yep, yep, and yep. Like any other bureaucratic measure that forces a procedural and limiting element into the trenches of day-to-day teaching, if you take it seriously and work through the process authentically, you will be left with some pieces that will only aid your pedagogy and help you become a better teacher. And isn’t that in everyone’s best interest?

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There is a model of pedagogical thought out there that suggests students should be grouped by abilities. There is another train of thinking that advocates for mixed-level groupings. We can get into the debate over which one teachers should implement in our classrooms, but that is not where I am going here. Both philosophies imply that teachers should pick the groups. This naturally extends to the fact that if teachers pick student groupings, cliques will be broken up. It is hard to argue that students should spend the course of a school year working with multiple peers. If Johnny is working with Bobby and Billy on this project, he should work with some other kids on the next one. It makes sense to switch up the groups and provide students with the experience of working with peers that they may not be “friends” with. But how often do we break up cliques of teachers?

I’ll take the stand first. I go to a school, get comfortable with a few teachers, and subsequently “work” with them from that point on. If I have a new lesson or activity, it is shared with my clique and vise versa. I will stop in the rooms of teachers I am “cool” with, talk with their students, and perhaps even do a little bit of “teaching” a hundred times more so than I would with a teacher I am merely acquaintances with. If I have a fresh idea or even if I want to vent, my clique is going to be my support and springboard. Sure, I have naturally gravitated to these particular people for a reason. But I have no doubt that a collection of staff would be more productive, effective, and well-rounded if we had someone “breaking us up” from time to time. If we cannot argue against the benefits of alternating student-group dynamics within a classroom, we should try it as teachers ourselves from time to time.

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If bell work is a thing, that means students roughly between the ages of 8 to 18 get to school, drop their belongings in their lockers, or on their hooks at the back of the room, or desks, and promptly sponge any socialization in for a few minutes before they return to their seats and again promptly attend to tasks, questions, and problems that require quiet, individual thinking. Hold on. I thought we were about “collaborative learning”? I thought we were about co-created success criteria and problem-based inquiry and flipped-classes? How does bell work mesh with that? Oh wait, it gets worse. That is, if bell work is still a thing.

Sorry for drenching this diatribe with questions, but are we supposed to believe that we should be able to hold students’ attention from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., or whatever other daily schedule the traditional school operates on by forcing them to work from bell to bell? At times, I try to be a thought leader or an educational visionary, but in reality I am just a teacher. And in reality, bell work is not reality. If I have an entire morning where my students are perky, alert, engaged, and attentive, that is a win. If I string this dynamic together for an entire day or even a week, that is nothing short of magic. I’ve tried being the stern commander-in-chief to the happy-go-lucky friend and everything in between. In reality, other than morning attendance, no one thing works every single day.

Perhaps I am suggesting such a limited angle on the ideal of bell work that I will be dismissed as dichotomizing. Perhaps the tropes of bell work truly suggest a collection of activities meant to spark students’ curiosity and engagement while setting a routine of practice and expectation that encourages attentiveness from the onset of the school day. “Daily Group Challenge”, “Problem of the Day”, and “Intro Cards” can be all extensions of the bell work ideal. I don’t know if they exist but they sound like, with some thought behind them, they could be interesting for students. With bell work notwithstanding, I work my students hard and make sure they are prepared for whatever next grade they are going to eventually enter. And truth be told, I honestly do not see a benefit in making my students do work for ten minutes after the bell when they are engaged with the other work that I provide them throughout the rest of the day. Actually, I feel like bell work can potentially make students resent school.

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