The Last Classroom Opener I'll Ever Use

Is it stealing, or just good practice?

Now that we’ve got the podcast channel up and running, I’m hoping to take Marcus’s lead and start writing more for this page as well. I used to maintain a teaching blog from my early days in the classroom, but for the sake of self-preservation I won’t provide any more details than that. To be honest, I don’t even know how to find it anymore, but I’m sure somebody who really wanted to could do some digging and find it.

Still, as we look towards the start of 2023, and for many of us a new semester, I thought I’d share something that actually evolved from the early days of the podcast that has totally revolutionized my classroom culture: my start of class routine.

If anyone is interested in going back to listen to the whole conversation, it’s when I interviewed my grad school advisor, Dr. Patrick Comstock, on his education journey. One of his big areas of research and focus in practice—and which he brilliantly modeled in my seminars with him in Brooklyn—was mindfulness in the classroom. Just like actually going to therapy, this was the kind of thing that I always knew was probably a good idea, but just hadn’t gotten around to doing it. Kinda like going to the dentist, which I should also probably do soon.

In the interview, Comstock really sold me on the idea of doing something very simple, but very powerful, in my classroom. As this routine has evolved over time, I’ve become even more of a believer in it as a practice for so many different reasons.

I’ve always been somewhat disenchanted with things like bell ringers or Do-Nows. I get it, of course. Teaching can be chaotic, and when you have 20+ teenagers hustling into your classroom, you need to get them doing something as quickly as possible in order for things to run smoothly. I’m sure you’ve all seen a million variations of this: some kind of reading comprehension question, a free-write, reviewing homework notes, etc. Some kind of task that’s expected immediately upon entering the room. I’ve even been in professional development settings where I’ve walked into the room with a Do Now posted on the board for all of the adults walking into the session. I’m a fantastic student, so of course I’ll always take the cue and get right on task, but I still was always quietly annoyed with being told to DO something right now, before anyone had even said hello.

I also happened to interview Comstock as we were all transitioning from remote learning, and like most teachers, I was looking for ways to evolve and adjust my practice as we came back to in-person learning. So when he talked to me about his mindfulness routine from his time in the classroom, I decided to give it a shot.

The process is exceedingly simple, which is one of the things I love most about it. First, I have an image of what students’ desks should look like, and a checklist of the materials they’ll need:

You’ll have to excuse the Space Cat stuff—it’s a rhetorical analysis framework that I have a lot of fun with as an AP Lang teacher. Still, the directions are simple, and always the same:

“Take a minute to organize your things and get ready.”

I don’t know why I never did it before, but one of my problems with bell-ringers and Do-Nows is that they seem to have completely forgotten that students actually need to do some human stuff before engaging in the learning, and that “teaching bell-to-bell” requires a little bit of materials setup at the beginning of the period. During this minute, I take attendance, which my school (like many others) requires be taken every class period. I’m not entirely sure why this felt a little rebellious, but simply giving myself and my students permission to get set up and ready for the lesson felt a little like cheating—but I did it anyways.

An important part of this process is also simply waiting for everyone to be 100% set up and ready to go. In addition to making space for a little bit of humanity and recognition that they are actually coming from a bunch of different classes, and potentially bringing in a bunch of other social drama, this is a critical step that I think communicates, “No, I actually do mean you. It’s important that you, too, are fully engaged and ready to participate in class today.” Sometimes I have waited awkward lengths of time before starting in on the lesson if there are any students feeling particularly squirrelly that day & trying to slip under the radar (heads down, sitting in the wrong seat, no binder, checking emails when we aren’t starting with Chromebooks, etc.). The key is simply giving yourself permission to wait until everyone is actually ready. Sometimes it takes time, and that’s okay.

Once this is all set, the most important part of any lesson occurs: and mindful breath and a commitment to self. It’s become so routine for me at this point that the script is always the same, but if you’re trying to start something like this for yourself, give yourself permission to find language that feels right for you. Here’s what I say:

“Push in your chairs, sit up nice and straight. Take a deep breath. In for three, out for five. Ready? Go.”

And then I count: “In for one, two, three. Out for one, two, three, four, five.”

“Now pause, take a look at the board, and make a commitment to yourself.” By this time, I’ve switched the slide:

“Give me a thumbs up when you’re ready.” And then I wait for the thumbs. Here, I don’t actually wait until everyone is giving a thumbs-up, because mandating mindfulness just feels wrong, but almost everybody does it anyways.

At the beginning of the year, one of my first activities was for students to write out what they needed the classroom space to be. I threw everything into a word cloud, and drafted these statements based on the top words & phrases that were most common amongst everyone. So, one of the many reasons students take this routine seriously when it might otherwise be written off as some strange, silly, quirky routine that Mayers really likes is because they actually see themselves in the language.

That’s it. The entire process takes less than 120 seconds, and nothing happens before the commitments are fully complete. There’s also nothing that comes before this. No test, quiz, or essay can commence before everyone has taken a deep breath and made a commitment. Sometimes students will just sort of sit there and stare off into space, not really buying into the process for real, but most of them do it. I’ve literally watched a student do this with a tear running down their cheek because they were just broken up with in the hallway (something I found out later). I’ve had students tell me that this routine was the only time in their day when they could collect themselves, and feel like their day wasn’t just one wild sprint from one class to another.

We’ve all been there before.

Comments like that have only made me more of a true believer. And before you wonder—as I did—if anyone observing wouldn’t think this is a good use of time, I’m happy to report that whenever my AP observes the start of my classes, I can see her participating right along with the kids. Her job is stressful, too.

If you think of it simply as an invitation for everyone to press pause on everything else going on in their lives, take one, simple moment for themselves, and actively choose their own mindset going into any lesson, it’s hard to think that this isn’t teaching bell-to-bell.

As we were closing out the first semester before winter break, one of my students said, “Hey, Mr. Mayers. We’ve been using these commitments for a long time. Do you think maybe we could write some new ones next semester?”

“Happily,” I replied.