One of the least favorite things that my students say, and I’m wondering if your students say the same thing, is on a Monday morning, when I ask, why the low energy, why the disengagement?
They’ll look at me like I’m crazy, and they’ll say, “It’s MONDAY”
Monday energy can be weird.
But I also think is that Monday is an awesome opportunity to get the ball rolling and show kids that we’ve got a great week ahead.
What I want to do in this post is give Monday the energy that it deserves by describing a lesson that I did with students and give you the opportunity to try and experiment with awesome lessons just like this with your own students.
Regardless of the age group that you teach, regardless of the subject area that you teach, I’m 100% confident that you can reach 100% of your students on a Monday morning.
I think you can get them from 0% engaged to 100% engaged just by trying this idea.
And that’s exactly what we’re gonna unpack right here, right now.
*This blog post was downloaded from the audio transcript of the This Teacher Life podcast. To listen to the audio version go here
Does your school have a specific block of time dedicated to get kids focused?
To getting kids just motivated and to get their wheels spinning, maybe it’s a time for them to communicate, maybe it’s a time for them to build up life skills, but overall, most schools have a time built into their schedule.
They call it advisory, morning meeting, homeroom, something like that.
If your school doesn’t have that built in, don’t freak out, because I’ve got a way for you to incorporate this.
But if your school does have a time built in, what I have found is people are like, yeah, but it turns into a waste of time or a free for all type of time, and because the structure isn’t quite there.
Well, in the structure of my school schedule right now, half of the classes that I teach each day are science and then the other half are for advisory.
I teach seventh grade advisory and I teach eighth grade advisory as an actual class.
So that means that every single day, my students are coming into my classroom for a full period, like 47 minute class period to gain college career and life readiness skills.
Those classes are not at the start of the day though.
So I don’t have them first thing in the morning.
That would be awesome if I had a first thing in the morning.
I also don’t have an advisory second hour.
I don’t have my first advisory class until third hour, which means that sometimes my students are just struggling, especially on a Monday morning to get some momentum to participate and to engage.
So that can often be difficult.
And I know that I’m not alone in that.
Monday mornings, kids come in and they’re in a video game coma.
They’re in like this Netflix brain where they’ve been staring at a TV maybe for hours on end over the weekend, and they’re just not ready to kind of rip the bandaid off, if you will, for school.
Some of our kids come in and they’re sleep deprived or their schedule’s been screwed up or they’re just in an emotional head space where they are not ready to learn.
So the big question is, how do we do that?
Especially on a Monday morning.
Like I said in the intro track, I’m recording this on a Monday after school.
Because after I did the lesson that I’m about to tell you about, I was like, man, I got to record that right away because it was so freaking effective.
I have the same group of kids twice a day.
So I have a specific group of kids during second hour for science, but then those exact same kids come back to me during fourth hour for an advisory.
And today during second hour, I mean, it was like pulling teeth.
They were struggling.
Quite frankly, I wasn’t at level 10 energy.
And that science lesson definitely was not as effective as what I had hoped for.
So then fourth hour rolls around and they’re in my class period for a completely different subject area.
Now they’re in there for my advisory class.
And I had a plan in place.
I knew what I wanted to do.
And I tried that lesson out, but I couldn’t get them talking.
I couldn’t get 100% of kids engaged in communicating.
And so as a teacher, I made the decision like, I’m gonna scrap that lesson.
I’m gonna save that for a time when we are ready to go, when we are just firing on all cylinders.
So what I did instead was I busted out one of my Monday morning motivation activities.
I’ve got 180 lessons that are all 180 SEL fully planned lessons that I can just bust out when I need them.
And I knew this morning, like I need something different than what I currently have planned.
So I pulled up this lesson that was ready to go, and I started with a conversation.
But I knew that because my kids were kind of needing more, that I needed to remix this conversation.
So I told students, in a second, I’m going to ask you a question.
And if you’re going to respond in this way, I need you to go stand on the left side of the room.
And if you’re going to respond in this way, I need you to go stand on the right side of the room, intentionally getting them up out of their chairs.
When this could have been just a conversation, I knew that we needed like a bit of a brain something, maybe you call it a brain break, I call it like I need some juice in your veins, let’s go.
So I asked him a question, very simple.
In life, if given the option of stairs versus escalator, which would you pick?
If you’re choosing stairs, go stand on the left side of the room.
If you’re choosing escalator, go stand on the right side of the room, go.
And I had the move, initial thought.
We’re not gonna talk about it.
We’re not gonna dive into it yet.
Just when given the choice, move to the left if you’re on team stairs, move to the right if you’re a team escalator.
And it was almost split, which was kind of interesting.
I didn’t expect that.
I, for the record, also participated in this and I moved to the side of stairs.
And I definitely had some students standing next to me.
It was about half and half.
And so then rather than just having like a class conversation, what I did was I said, okay, now justify why you’re standing there and try to convince a peer that’s on the other side of the room to come jump onto your team.
See if you can persuade or sway somebody to get to your side of the room.
And you’re not allowed to bribe them.
You’re not allowed to be like, I’ll give you 10 bucks if you come stand next to me.
No, none of that.
Like, back up your answer.
Well, again, kids moved.
And so we were at least getting some juices flowing, but I started and I said, here’s why I’m standing on the side of the steps.
I would take the stairs because I think stairs is good cardio.
I’m constantly trying to close my move ring on my Apple Watch.
So if I can take the stairs, that’s a great opportunity for me to just boost that move ring just a little bit.
And then a kid on the other side said, okay, I got one, straight up.
The reason why I’m standing on the escalator side is the exact opposite of Ms.
Genta’s reasoning.
I’m kind of lazy.
If given the chance to just stand on a moving platform or actually work my body, I would stand on the moving platform.
And I was like, okay, fair enough, that’s a really great point.
And then somebody on the other side said, yeah, but you sit all day in class.
You sit all day in class.
You sit all day in class.
I don’t want to be lazy on an escalator.
If I was given the chance to take the stairs to class, I would choose the stairs.
Well, fun fact, in my school, it’s a multi-tiered building.
So in my school, kids actually have to take the steps to multiple classes in multiple rooms throughout the day.
So that student made a really good point.
She was like, yeah, I sit in the classroom all day, like might as well get some movement.
And another kid said, oh, I wasn’t thinking about this question out of school setting.
When Miss Genta first asked, choose the stairs or the escalator, my mind immediately went to escalator because one time I was at an airport and we had a book bag and we had luggage and all this stuff.
And it was super hard to like drag your suitcase throughout the airport.
But the like escalator was really, really simple.
So I chose that because it just felt more reasonable.
And I’m like, dang, that’s a good point.
And then a kid standing next to me is like, wait, wait, wait, I got an argument for stairs.
And I’m like, yeah, share it.
And the kid said, well, I choose the stairs because like in PE, the PE teachers are always talking about getting your body moving to warm up.
And so if our bodies are always warmed up because we’re taking the stairs, we’re ready for any activity.
Where if we’re on an escalator, we’re not really getting our muscles moving.
Excellent point.
Then somebody on the escalator side said, well, you know what?
That’s a really good point.
What about people who can’t get their muscles warmed up?
What about somebody who’s on crutches or somebody who’s in a wheelchair?
They physically cannot take the stairs.
So an escalator feels like a smarter, more kind approach, especially if you’ve got a friend or a family member who’s on crutches or in a wheelchair.
Friends, the dynamic conversation that rolled out of this group of kids was freaking incredible.
I will remind you, this is the same group of kids who just two periods before this weren’t talking, weren’t participating.
I felt like I was getting like awkward stares and like awkward turtle and awkward cricket every single moment that I was teaching.
It was like, what is happening?
And now we’ve got kids being like, whoa.
Let me back this up.
We simply moved to a side of the room and had a conversation, a conversation that we could have had seated, but just the physical movement was really important.
And then another thing that was really cool that was happening here is kids were hearing each other.
And I allowed kids to move to the other side of the room based off of arguments that they heard, that they’re like, oh man, that’s a good choice.
When the kid said, I would choose the escalator because what if somebody was on crutches or in a wheelchair, I would want to travel with my friend or family member.
To be honest, I immediately moved over to that side.
That kid persuaded me to say, screw cardio, family’s more important.
Why?
Because my brother, he’s in a wheelchair.
And so I do travel with my brother sometimes.
And so I usually take the elevator with him or help him on the escalator as opposed to taking the steps.
This student proved a really good point.
This student got me to switch sides.
And by the end of it, we had about 50-50 kids picking stairs, kids picking escalator.
But it wasn’t the same 50-50 combo that we started with.
This was about communication.
This ended up being about good debate.
This ended up being about backing your stuff up with data.
And there were some really great moments of empathy, myself included.
I honestly felt a little bad that I was so hardcore on team stairs.
And then a student was like, what about people in wheelchairs or crutches?
And I’m like, shit, that’s my own brother.
Yeah, what a great point.
I would totally choose team escalator to just be with my brother.
That is what happens when we have the structure in place to say this plan that I had isn’t working.
But if I pivot, I know that I’ve got something awesome in my teacher toolbox that can work.
Because guess what the next part of my Monday morning motivation SEL lesson was?
I had a video clip ready to go.
That was about escalators.
Now on the surface, as the kid watched, it was like a two minute clip.
Was the video actually about escalators?
Yes, but what the video really was about was feeling stuck in life.
How sometimes we feel stuck in life and we just kind of are sitting on an escalator, not moving.
How we get stuck and we don’t have grit and we don’t have the growth mindset and we’re just chilling on an escalator instead of moving our bodies in the direction that we need and want to go.
But the only reason why I pulled that video clip up and even remembered what in the first place is because it was already embedded into the lesson.
I knew what conversation starter I wanted to ask because I was like, boom, I got a lesson for kids that’s gonna get them talking.
And then I pulled up the YouTube clip and the kids were fascinated because in this YouTube clip, there are these business people on this escalator and the escalator stops.
And immediately they’re like, oh my God, what are we gonna do?
The escalator has stopped.
They’re like, is anybody available to help us?
The escalator has stopped moving.
The escalator stopped moving and they also stopped moving.
And when the video was done, the kids are like, why didn’t they just walk down the escalator?
And another kid said, why didn’t they just walk up the escalator?
And another kid said, like, why didn’t they just scream more than once?
Like that dude said, can anyone help us one time?
Why didn’t he just keep doing that?
Some kids were like, why didn’t they just climb over the other side?
The other side of the escalator is literally moving.
Why didn’t they just hop over?
And all of a sudden, these kids were problem solving.
They were coming up with all these reasonable, possible solutions on what these people could have done to be not stuck.
Stuck.
How many times in our life have we seen kids get stuck on a math problem?
We’ve seen kids get stuck on some sort of worksheet.
We’ve seen kids get stuck in some sort of situation and they just give up because they haven’t practiced problem solving enough.
I genuinely believe that we have to put our kids in situations where they are problem solving, they are rationalizing, they are debating, they are thinking outside of the box in a safe space like our classroom.
And we’re hashing it out and we’re talking about it.
So when they do hit a roadblock, when they do hit a hard patch in life, they’ve at least problem solved and have the skills to rationalize what is my next best step.
This isn’t what I saw coming.
This isn’t what I expected.
But I at least have the college career and life readiness skills to see my way out of the problem and come up with a new solution.
Literally the only way that our kids are gonna be able to do that is if we practice that communication, if we practice that problem solving.
And I think that’s what advisory and morning meeting and SEL time and homeroom time is all about.
I do not think that homeroom is study hall.
I do not think that morning meeting is just a time for us to sit in a circle and talk about lunch count.
I don’t think that if you have an advisory in your schedule in your middle school, that it’s just a time for kids to like, you know, talk and get their head on straight for 10 minutes.
I think sometimes we get frustrated because it’s like, well, morning meeting is only 10 minutes, morning meeting is only 15 minutes.
Or like, we only have homeroom once a week, we only have advisory once a week.
And so instead of using that time strategically, what we do is we complain, it’s not enough time, there’s not enough structure, these lessons suck.
We don’t even know what we’re supposed to do.
So what we end up doing is similar to what the people did on the escalator.
We feel stuck, so we don’t move.
We feel stuck, so we don’t do anything.
And I totally get it from a teacher’s perspective.
It is the number one reason why I ended up writing these 180 full lesson plans myself.
When I wrote these a number of years ago, I was at a school that gave us a curriculum for advisory slash morning meeting time, and it was absolutely terrible.
My students cringed at the videos.
I cringed at the videos.
It was like pulling teeth to get kids to talk because they’re like, oh my gosh, this is so sappy.
Oh my gosh, this feels like something that is not for us.
Like younger kids should be listening to this.
It was a lot of role playing and it was a lot of awkward and I couldn’t get kids to communicate.
And so instead of being stuck on the escalator that wasn’t moving, I was like, I gotta move the needle with these kids.
So I’m gonna dive in and I’m just gonna create like 180 full SEL lessons.
And what ended up happening was I got 36 Monday morning motivations with conversations, with full videos, with activities, with dialogue that works.
And so now do I use these on a daily basis in my classroom?
No, because I always have this as my backup plan.
When I first started teaching advisory as a class, I used it daily, but now I’ve got so many other ideas that I can supplement that I know that there are moments where I was like, oh man, these kids aren’t responding to this.
I’m gonna bust out a different idea.
And that’s exactly what I did today with this escalator situation.
So maybe my question to you is, are you currently feeling stuck in your schedule?
And you’re like, we don’t even have time for this.
When would I do this?
Well, there were some years that I’ve taught.
I’ve been teaching 15 years and there have definitely been some years that have been taught where I didn’t have a dedicated morning meeting or advisory time.
So what I would do is once every other week, I would literally do a life lesson or an SEL lesson during my science class.
Instead of complaining about like, I don’t have time.
I would supplement science and SEL for each other.
And it totally worked.
Let me ask you this, or maybe you in a situation right now where you’re feeling stuck because you’re like, I don’t even have enough minutes to get into one of these things.
Because the lesson that I was talking to you about with the escalator, that was 45 minutes.
I did this full lesson for 45 minutes.
And you’re like, I don’t have 45 minutes.
Well, who says that you can’t do this same lesson over three days?
Who says, day one is pick a side, stairs or escalator?
Day two is, hey, let’s watch this video clip and discuss it.
And day three is, let’s connect how this is actually happening in your everyday life.
Where have you been stuck like this on an escalator in your everyday teenage or elementary or high school life?
Right?
So if it’s, I don’t have lessons, yeah, you do.
Let me tell you, you’ve got access to these lessons because after I made these and they worked so well with my middle school students, I was like, I’m just gonna make these look good and help teachers with organization and they’re available.
You can actually get all of these lessons at monicagenta.com forward slash 180 SEL.
That’s monicagenta.com forward slash 180 SEL.
And here’s the cool thing, after I did this, elementary teachers, especially lower elementary teachers, like I want this for grades like first through fourth.
Where is this for lower elementary?
And I’m like, yeah, I don’t have that.
And they’re like, please make it for lower elementary.
So actually a couple of years ago, what I did was I recreated 180 days of Awesome SEL and now I’ve got an elementary version and a middle school, high school version.
So if you’re like, I just need the lessons, boom.
If you’re like, I don’t have the time, yes you do.
You can chunk these lessons over multiple days.
If you’re like, I don’t have the structure, find a place in the current structure of your day and it doesn’t even have to be daily.
At some point, supplement some other content in curriculum for college career and life readiness skills so your kids can communicate and problem solve and be ready to freaking crush it in every aspect of their life.
That’s how important I think this is.
Overall, I don’t want you feeling stuck on an escalator.
I don’t want you feeling trapped like you’re not moving and you’re not growing and raising up with kids.
If you are stuck on an escalator, guess what?
Take the stairs.
Because when you take the stairs, guess who’s in charge of putting forth all of that energy you are.
And sometimes it means walking into your principal’s office and being like, we need to do something, we need to create a structure, we need to create a schedule, we need to jump on board this 180 days of awesome SEL curriculum.
Sometimes taking the stairs says, I’m gonna put forth some extra energy because I know that’s what’s best for my whole staff and for the entire student population of this school.
I want this one Monday morning lesson that quite frankly could be used on any day of the week to give you the momentum to prove that this kind of thing is so good for schools, so good for students, and so good for staff.
So maybe diving into 180 days of awesome SEL is the one thing that could change everything for the rest of this school year and maybe even the upcoming school year.
I hope it is something that you are willing to try.
With so much love,
PS- Get 180 Awesome Lessons Just Like this One Right Here