Don't smile
The gauntlet has been thrown
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No more than 15 minutes later, I found myself standing at one end of a makeshift walkway, facing a girl with a killer poker face. Twenty-six other small bodies were crowded around us as she began walking towards me, but it was silent. I began to walk too, doing my best to maintain eye contact. As me and the girl passed each other, 26 pairs of eyes squinted, hoping to catch the slightest of smiles on our faces. Their efforts were fruitless as Miss Pokerface and I reached the opposite ends of the walkway without so much as a smirk. Groans of disappointment littered the crowd as both opponents evaded elimination. As each pair of students passed each other, the pained looks on their faces from trying to stifle grins intensified. The meeting seemed to end just as quickly as it started and within minutes, the sound of scraping chairs occupied the room once more.
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Morning Meeting
It’s common practice in elementary school to start the day with some sort of routine to talk about the day ahead before starting the lessons. I decided to observe one such routine at Steele Elementary with Mrs. Hellenga’s 5th grade class. Many morning routines I’ve observed involve a quick rundown of the day’s schedule and offer little opportunity for student interaction. What stood out to me in Mrs. Hellenga’s particular routine (Morning Meeting) was a) the amount of independent yet collaborative student involvement and b) the unique utilization of movement.
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Role of Imitation
Morning Meeting begins by each student greeting and shaking the hand of each of their classmates. After this, a student will go over the day’s agenda while the class listens. To close, the class does a few movement-based activities (i.e. the Giggle Gauntlet.) As I sat waiting for today’s meeting to begin, I was struck by how little directing the students needed. As such, this automaticity was not acquired overnight. It was clear that lots of explicit instruction and practice was done prior to my observation even though it appeared to be natural.
Mauss would say that this nearly flawless execution of the rules is not natural and is instead determined by the critical role imitation has in the formation and solidification of body techniques. Each rule and expectation has to be explicitly taught by the teacher and copied by students until it becomes “natural.”
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At times, this instruction was as blatant as Mrs. Hellenga modelling how to participate in the Giggle Gauntlet by physically demonstrating how to do a mock-round. This demonstration was actually done for my sake because I had not been subject to the same practice and imitation that her students have. Other times, instruction on body techniques was so subtle that if you blinked, you missed it. For example, when one student was sharing a story during the meeting, Mrs. Hellenga complimented another student for appropriately facing the speaker and maintaining eye contact. After that quick comment, other students who were doing otherwise, similarly shifted their bodies to mimic the complimented behavior. The power of observation became further apparent later in the meeting when she explained and demonstrated the correct way to handle new technology they would be using later that day. Sure enough, a handful of students were literally copying her motions as she spoke.
Presence of Authority Figures and the Social Function of Movement
I also noticed how the presence of (or lack thereof) an authority figure affected the way students moved their bodies. If the teacher was in the room, bodies demonstrated a level of control that was absent as soon she stepped out for minute. One second, students are sitting up straight and turned towards whoever is speaking. Another second, Mrs. Hellenga is in the hallway and students are turning in their seats to socialize with their peers and any sense of collective focus is gone. It would seem that the body technique they learned to use when the teacher was present was not effective, or relevant when she was not.
While activities like the Giggle Gauntlet are silly and a lighthearted way to start the day, they also present an unique opportunity for students to productively socialize with each other. By learning and becoming responsible for the independent execution of such activities, students not only act with synchrony, they also rely on each other to correctly use the same body techniques in order to be synchronized in the first place. For example, when one student was standing out of line for the Giggle Gauntlet, the game had to be paused to fix the cluster of students that formed as a result. Additionally, if I hadn’t learned the rules or failed to copy Miss Pokerface during my turn, I would have thrown the game off. As such, I would have disrupted the carefully crafted culture of Morning Meeting which would have weakened its socioemotional benefits. I think this relates to Sehlikoğlu’s notion of sports consciousness. Just as Turkish people see physical exercise as a “cultivating and civilizing ritual,” I believe these 5th graders utilize these movement-based activities for a similar function.
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Methodology
I initially planned on sitting in the back and observing Morning Meeting. However, I’ve spent two years at Steele and some of Mrs. Hellenga’s students were past students of mine. As such, my participation in the class activities was almost assumed and certainly felt natural. I tried to balance observation and participation during Morning Meeting so I sat among the students but at times, I disengaged from the activities so I could take notes on my laptop. Even though some of the students saw me in a teacher role similar to that of Mrs. Hellenga, I participated in the activities as if I was one of them so that I could better feel the social and emotional aspect of Morning Meeting. In the future, I will probably do multiple observations with varying degrees of participation. This would allow me to fully experience Morning Meeting as a “student” while also having an opportunity to notice more subtle patterns of movement.
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Any classroom that plans on being functional needs some level synchronization. However, I think elementary classrooms present an even greater need for this due to more time that is spent with the same group of people. Students learn the body techniques necessary for this synchronicity by observing and then imitating the teacher. Through repetition, these techniques become habits which become (unnatural) “natural” characteristics of the classroom. However, I don’t think these techniques of the body are exclusively physical. Social and emotional needs can be accomplished through other body techniques that must also be learned through imitation. Just as Mauss claims there is an “education in walking,” I think there is also an “education in being” such that students essentially learn how to walk, talk, throw down the gauntlet, etc. by watching and imitating someone else.
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