Morning Meeting Pays Off

Before sixth-grade teacher Rashana Graham started the school day, she had her students talk about their feelings — online.

New Haven teachers have held such day-launching meetings for years, in person in class. It’s part of ​“social emotional” learning, a technique that helps students learn during the day by first addressing any woes they’re bringing into school.

Thursday, Graham sought to adapt the technique to remote, online learning. Teachers throughout the city’s public schools are trying to do that, too, as the system begins the academic year with at least 10 weeks of remote-only learning because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Graham let her Augusta Lewis Troup School sixth graders assemble in her Google Meets classroom at 8:30 a.m. to the sound of soft jazz. A few technical difficulties ensued, as either she or her students got kicked out of the classroom.

Then she gave them the social-emotional learning (SEL) assignment: choose 10 emojis and post a song on the group message board that matches each one.

She offered the example of a smiley face with a large bicep paired with ​“Only Girl (In The World)” by Rihanna, Graham’s favorite workout song.

Graham coaxed and re-instructed her students for roughly 15 minutes: ​“Marwa, you gotta tell me the name of the song, okay?” ​“It’s starting to look good, keep this going.” ​“If you’re done early, you can start commenting on some songs that you see that you love.”

The purpose of the exercise was to help students learn to identify their emotions and find songs that will help them process them.

“It’s the precursor to self-care . How can you self-care if you don’t know how you are feeling in the first place ?” Graham explained.

With a better understanding of how to work through their emotions, the theory goes, students can more easily get to a calm, receptive mood that works well for learning.

One student nailed the concept without trying.

“When I’m angry, I listen to meditation music, so I can try not to make the wrong decisions or get in trouble,” the sixth grader said.

Another student, Josiah Dyson, was not ready to talk about his music tastes to the group. Graham asked him to pick a song he listened to the day before or describe the genre of music — to mumbles and silence.

Then his best friend, Quadir Suggs, teased him for listening to Dynamite by the Korean boy band BTS.

“Nah, that song slaps!” Dyson said.

Out loud, Graham said that she would listen to the song and play it the next day if it was school-appropriate.

Inside, she was celebrating, she said afterwards. She described a similar reaction to Saayda Saanon’s message in the group chat about her favorite song.

“Sayda’s first day sharing was today. I’m proud of her today,” Graham said.

New Haven teachers have on and off set aside class time to focus on the emotions students bring into school since the 1960s. The approach has gone in and out of fashion but has been steadily gaining momentum in the district in recent years.

While many schools have focused heavily on social-emotional learning, to phase out suspensions, for example, this is the first time every single student starts every day with an SEL-focused morning meeting.

The change was planned prior to the pandemic, according to NHPS officials. It’s also more important because of the pandemic.

Superintendent Iline Tracey has spoken in multiple meetings about the importance of SEL and healing when students return to school. Her body of 20,000 students has been traumatized in the past few months from job loss and deaths in their families, from the loneliness of remote school and more, she has said.

For Graham, the morning meeting helps build the community feeling that is more natural within a classroom than on a laptop. As Thursday showed, coaxing students to emerge from the black boxes of Google Meets to share their thoughts is a challenge.

“I love SEL. I think it makes the kids talk to each other. Once they start feeling more comfortable in getting to know each other, it starts to feel okay talking on camera,” Graham said.

Graham scrolled through the emoji and music pairings she received from students. Few to none added the 10 emojis she asked for.

“It might not have gone exactly the way I wanted it to, but I got a lot of people starting to talk.”