This image, taken during a discussion among students in Denarius Frazier's classroom (described in Chapter 1), tells a story about how classrooms can encourage students to send signals of belonging to one another, and the power those apparently tiny signals have to shape classroom culture in significant ways. Those smiles of support, those affirming gazes of Vanessa's classmates—they are no small thing, we contend.

In a moment we're going to delve more deeply into the video of that lesson and several others to unpack key details of how classrooms can be wired to signal connection and belonging, how they can be made to feel so dynamic and engaging that students feel swept up in something, and how classrooms can make students feel important, like part of something bigger. But we want to pause first to make an important point.

You will see connection, community, joy, and belonging in all of the classrooms we show you. We hope you will study them carefully alongside us to unlock the magic the teachers have wired into the culture. But please do not fail to observe that these classrooms are all also academically demanding, rigorous, and knowledge-rich. They ensure emotional and psychological fulfillment while also fostering the highest rates of learning and achievement.

These are classrooms that prioritize learning—more than the average classroom, arguably—and yet students still feel connection and belonging throughout. In many cases those feelings come about because of the learning they are doing. So we want to be clear: the question we should be asking is not How do we wire classrooms so students feel belonging and connection? It's How do we wire classrooms so students feel belonging and connection while making sure they learn as much as possible? It cannot be a choice between the two.

Fortunately, there's more synergy than conflict between these two goals. Remember that the psychologist Martin Seligman's formulation of happiness includes three pathways that create it: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. When those three things combine, the feeling of well-being is strongest. Of the three pathways, people are most likely to perceive the connection between pleasure and happiness, but most likely to actually be made happy by experiencing engagement and meaning. A 2009 study by Seligman and Stephen Schueller found that while all three contributed to an individual's overall sense of well-being, pursuing engagement and meaning was more strongly related to well-being than pursuing pleasure.¹ When we lose ourselves in a task and we feel like what we are working toward is important, we are happy.

HIS STUDENTS ARE SO MOTIVATED

It's hard to watch the video of Denarius's class and not be impressed by his students. Each time Denarius asks a question they throw themselves into the task with energy and spirit. “We're a little divided,” he says to students a little less than 30 seconds into the clip. “Turn and Talk: Why?”

The moment that phrase leaves his mouth, the room crackles to life. Every student enthusiastically discusses the problem with a peer without a moment's hesitation. A more rational response (at least in many classrooms) might be to turn to your partner and observe what they do first before expressing any willingness (or enthusiasm) to discuss the question on your own part. Are they really going to talk to you about sine and cosine? You wouldn't want to be too eager if your classmate was going to roll her eyes or scoff at the conversation. If that was what students were doing in Denarius's classroom, things would literally sound different. The response would be far more muted: the sounds of voices would be tentative at first and build only very slowly, or not at all.

But that's not what happens here. Students seem utterly sure that their peers will want to talk math. There isn't a second of doubt or hesitation. And of course, having seen their peers' response to this Turn and Talk, they will be even more confident next time. They will have internalized one more data point that the norm in Mr. Frazier's room is enthusiastic scholarly engagement.

Later, when they discuss the problem as a group, students talk to each other, not past each other. They listen carefully. They build off one another's ideas. Each student's comments seem important, which means that they feel important.

It's an impressive group of young people. In fact sometimes a colleague will watch the video and say something along the lines of, “Well if my students were like that, I could work miracles too,” but to see the video that way is to mistake the outcome for the cause. We understand why you might make that mistake, mind you. Denarius appears to do very little except simply step back, ask a question, and smile in anticipation of the room exploding into engaged intellectual debate.

But of course, as anyone who's ever tried it knows, the reality is far more complex. If you “did what he does” here without laying the foundation he has carefully lain, you'd get a very different result. Yes, we think almost any group of students will engage this positively if the environment is just right, but it also takes a great deal of intentional design and engineering to create just the right classroom environment. The moves Denarius makes in the video are carefully if subtly executed and the moves that we don't see because they happened before this lesson took place are twice as important—and doubly intentional.

What we are seeing is an exercise in positive social engineering, which is to say Denarius has thought very deeply about the culture he wants his room to express and how he can bring it into being. In fact, what we hope to convey in this chapter is that classrooms are first and foremost cultures, and the interactions among students, especially in the classroom, must be deliberately orchestrated to build a sense of connection, belonging, and shared scholarly endeavor.

To go a step further, engineering classrooms this way is quite possibly the single most important thing schools and teachers can do to help address students' need for connection and community. After all, in a typical seven-hour school day, students might spend six of those hours in classrooms. A school can invest in its socioemotional programs and extracurricular activities (in later chapters we'll discuss how to do that, so know that we are in favor of those things) but unless the classrooms come to life like Denarius's does, unless the six hours per day of sitting in lessons makes students feel important, accomplished, connected, and successful, the other pieces are only going to help so much. The classroom remains the fundamental site of interaction in school. There is no way to have an inclusive school culture worthy of every child without weaving reliably great culture into the overwhelming majority of classrooms.

On the whole young people are historically behind academically and are historically isolated socially. Leading schools and classrooms that create opportunity and foster well-being sufficiently to address this dual crisis necessarily demands a level of intentionality about the culture that we hope to show is evident in Denarius's classroom. Your classroom (or classrooms if you lead a school) will of course feel slightly different, will bring to light a culture with different emphases and tone. But in this chapter we argue that it should have the same level of intentionality; we like the word “engineered” to describe the level of design that's necessary to creating the optimal learning environment. Every classroom should ensure that students work hard toward important goals with focus and engagement, uninterrupted by distractions, within a group of peers who signal caring and support, especially when members of the group are in the midst of scholarly endeavor.

We think that's possible and we're going to show you a series of classrooms that prove it. We'll study why they are that way and focus on a handful of things that matter most from a point of view of connection and belonging in Denarius's classroom and others like it. (Our discussion draws heavily on terms that readers of Doug's book Teach Like a Champion 3.0 will be familiar with. For those who aren't, we'll try to explain them briefly as we go, but if this chapter speaks to you, you will need that book as well.)

“SNAPS IF YOU AGREE”

Let's start with a tiny and seemingly inconsequential moment. About 1:15 into the video of Denarius's classroom, a student named Folusho (in the back row, wearing a sweatshirt) responds to her classmate, Vanessa. “Okay,” she says, “I agree with Vanessa. I think [example] A is finding the reciprocal, and reciprocal and inverse are not the same thing.” As she says this, something that might seem odd happens. Three or four classmates start to snap. A few seconds later you can see Fagan, the girl in the center of the screen, nodding along as she snaps. She's looking around, trying to establish eye contact with other students to encourage them to join in and snap too.

The snapping is a system of positive reinforcement Denarius has established. Students snap to show support for a classmate when she is speaking. The “support” can signal a variety of subtly different things. On an intellectual level it can express, “I agree with you” or “I got that answer too.” On a more emotional level it can mean, “I support you; keep going; you're doing fine.”

Perhaps this seems at first like a bit of a gimmick. It isn't.

Speaking to a group of people is anxiety inducing, but also necessary for optimal learning. Almost everyone feels at least mild tension when they speak in front of a group, doubly so teenagers, who are keenly sensitive to status and peer acceptance. For the great majority of us, the moments when we start to speak are moments when a small voice asks, “Do I sound stupid right now?” or perhaps less anxiously, “Is what I am saying making sense?” If we feel right away that we are succeeding and winning approval, that can be a huge motivator to persist in talking and to talk again in the future. On the other hand, if we're plagued by doubts, if we think it's going badly and that we've just embarrassed ourselves in front of others, it will make us want to speak less.

This is a constant challenge in classrooms. Talking in public about ideas is central to learning about them; it's also central to building cultures of belief. If I never see people in my peer group talking about sine and cosine, I will likely think those things are not for me either. If my peers are always talking about sine and cosine—and the electoral college and juxtaposition and resistance and adagio—then I will come to believe that those things are mine too.

So it's important that as Folusho starts to talk, she instantly gets subtle but consistent positive feedback from her peers. You're doing great, they're saying, even as she's talking. Her classmates are able to simply and without interrupting her express the idea that they support her. It's a tiny signal that reinforces her feelings of success and builds between them a sense of membership in something meaningful and real. Using a shared code demonstrates that they are part of a group. Using it to praise a comment about finding the inverse of sine says that the group values the scholarly.

You can hear these snaps of support and affirmation throughout the video: when Brittany weighs in about 1:45 into the video and again at about two minutes. There's snapping for Vanessa when she changes her answer just after 2:15. You could argue that this is as important a signal as the smiles and glances of affirmation that we described in Chapter 1.

Note also that Denarius specifically asks for snaps at 2:30: “I agree that A is the answer. Snaps if that's correct.” He's reinforcing the signal, making it more of a habit for all students to use it, and making everyone feel like they are participants in getting the right answer. Their sign-off (Yes, we all agree. That's correct.) affirms the groupishness of the moment. Just maybe it's not fully correct until they've all affirmed it in this small way. A room full of teenagers is a room full of people looking around to determine what are the unspoken norms of thought and belief to which they should adhere. In that setting every single person in the room has just affirmed: I understand how to find the inverse of sine. I care about finding the inverse of sine.

Snaps for that, we say.

There's even a hilarious moment (well, we think it's hilarious) at about 2:45, where Omowunmi is speaking and one student in the back snaps “wrong”—at least in Fagan's eyes. Maybe his timing is off. Maybe it's too loud. But Fagan glances back as if to let him know, “Hey, that's not how we do it.”

Side note: We're pretty sure we could make a movie just about Fagan and her incredible efforts build connections and shape norms behind the scenes in this video. Like so many kids in your classrooms, she is a connector, a team builder, a captain. She and a thousand kids like her are all-in on culture building if we can give them a truly worthy culture to help build!

In fact what Fagan's reaction to the “wrong” snapping—and the moment when she is rounding up snappers to support Folusho—tells us is that she perceives this system to be hers. She wants it done right! Denarius has carefully installed and explained the system. He has set initial rules for how to use it (and how not to!) but now there's shared ownership. Students are constantly initiating it of their own accord without Denarius's input. They value the way it shapes the classroom, now—the positivity, the mutual support, the connection it creates. It lets them be actively involved when someone else is talking.

Anytime students remind each other of their community's deeply held beliefs, values, principles—“how we do things here”—it makes that community and individual’s commitment to it stronger. Students take intellectual risks and persist in Denarius's class in part because they get this small signal of affirmation from their peers. They engage more fully as listeners because they get to send signals of appreciation to their classmates and because looking to praise things you find insightful causes you to see them more often. Denarius has given students a way to build a team, to signal membership and support to one another, and they have embraced it. They like feeling like a team.

The snapping seems like a small thing, but it's not.

One reason it's not a small thing is that in many cases, how a student's classmates respond to her efforts to participate is as important as, if not more so than how her teacher does. In Motivated Teaching, Peps McCrea reminds us that our perception of social norms is the single biggest influence on our actions and motivations. The older the student, we'd argue, the more important their perception of the group norm is in shaping their behavior. Teens will seek to do what they think other teens do.

Further, McCrea notes, the more we feel we belong to a group, the more we become invested in its goals and conform to its norms. Students signal (to others) and reinforce (to themselves) their membership when they snap along with peers. This makes them more vested in the culture.

Imagine: You are sitting in a class room where your peers' actions are telling you: We enjoy and value discussing trigonometry. It’s a norm, an unwritten assumption or rule within the group. The more you feel you're part of that group, the more tiny things you do to express your membership in it, the more your peers appear to make an effort to signal that you belong, the more you feel pleasure, engagement, and meaning as you do things. All of these things cause you to internalize the norms of the group more deeply, and in this case the more you feel like you are an enjoys-and-values-discussing-trigonometry kind of person. It recalls an observation of Daniel Coyle's: “Belonging feels like it happens from the inside out, but in fact it happens from the outside in.” You feel like you belong because you act like you belong. Tiny signals are as important as big ones.

Meanwhile, Denarius says nothing during most of these interactions. We don't see him build the system; we don't see all the moments at the beginning of the year when he explained to students when to snap and how to do it right (quickly two or three times only, etc.). It looks like he's passive, but he's far from it.

To design the procedures in a classroom, to make them routine, to invest students with a feeling of shared ownership in them when possible, to ensure that they engage in and feel engaged by them: these are among the most important skills of any teacher but especially the teacher who seeks to shape his or her students' perception of school and their relationship to it. To shape norms and build students' buy-in to those norms is to build culture. That's what makes Denarius's classroom exceptional. To put a fine point on it, we will not succeed in addressing the academic and social needs of young people in the wake of the pandemic unless we actively build optimal learning cultures. We've chosen to begin studying how this works with such a seemingly mundane norm—peer-to-peer snapping—to show that even a very small behavior can be immensely influential in achieving that goal.

WE CALL THIS “PROPS”

We call the classroom systems that encode snapping and other forms of affirmation “Props.” To give props is to give recognition, approval, acknowledgment, or praise to another person. There are a variety of potential versions beyond snapping that a teacher can use to allow students to express mutual affirmation. Two other common versions are “sending shine” and “sending magic.” When students “send shine” to one another they make a small gesture on their hands with fingers wriggling like sunlight entering a room and direct it at someone they wish to show support for.

This image shows students in a video we'll discuss shortly “sending shine” to a classmate as she answers a question. Sending shine is similar to snapping because it expresses appreciation, but some teachers prefer it because it is silent and because the name makes the purpose explicit: a signal we send to support someone and help them succeed.

It's not either/or of course. Sending “shine” can coexist with snapping (the classroom we took this picture from uses both). But it's also important to be careful of having too many Props. Better to have one that works really well than several that don't build pitch-perfect culture. We like snapping a bit more with older students. The percussiveness of the snaps is especially affirming to the speaker (they can hear and almost feel it, even if they aren't looking) and the signal is gratifying to send so people like sending it more. It's also more “grown up.” You may doubt that, but if we start snapping in our workshops with adults, we often find it spreading throughout the room even though we don't ask people to use it. People just like the way it feels.

With any signal, teachers have to remain attentive to how students use it. Someone will always want to overdo it; it can become silly, a form of subtle disruption, if not used with discretion. So you'll need to be ready with phrases such as “Hold your snapping please,” or “I love the snapping, but it has to be shorter and quieter. I promise your peers will still feel it” to gently correct.

With younger students, we're inclined to favor sending shine. It's cheery by name so asking for it feels upbeat: “Send David some shine.” Plus snapping is more likely to go awry with very young students—they're not quite as experienced socially and don't know quite as intuitively when it makes sense to use it. So shine at younger grades and snapping at older grades is a decent rule of thumb, but you can see the full array of possibilities in the videos we've shared. Ideally this will allow you to imagine different approaches to defining and amplifying these tiny signals so they are clearer and more evident.

In the video Christine Torres: Props, Christine is teaching vocabulary and we see her use “shine” twice. First as a student, Etani, hesitates in answering a challenging question, Christine asks her classmates, “Send Etani some shine.” They do so enthusiastically, and you can sense the support Etani feels before she nails the question. In a second example from Christine's lesson, there's another challenging question and here Christine models sending “shine” herself. Several other students choose to join in. It's feels organic in the way students choose to express their support.

Sarah Wright is also teaching vocabulary in the video Sarah Wright: Props and her students are fired up to try to use their new words. She calls on Akeem, and several students (his neighbor to the right in particular) show their support for his enthusiasm by sending enthusiastic magic. It's worth noting that almost out of habit Sarah makes the magic gesture herself in calling on Akeem.

In the video Rousseau Mieze: Props, Rousseau has chosen two students' written work to share with the class. He playfully asks the class to “snap it up” for them to honor their effort. The result is compelling.

And finally in Erin Magliozzi: Props, Erin's students spontaneously “shine on” Jas to support her as she answers. After she gets it right, they snap their approval. She's got both systems firing! To be Jas or any other student in a classroom like Erin's is to be supported, encouraged, connected, and reminded constantly that you belong.

“HABITS OF ATTENTION”: THE HIDDEN POWER OF STUDENTS TRACKING EACH OTHER

When we discussed the photo taken from the video of Denarius's class in Chapter 1, we focused on the power of what Vanessa's classmates were doing as she acknowledged her error—looking at her, smiling, sending nonverbal signals that they approved of her—and how they show their approval of her when she shows her scholarly side. The signals come via eye contact, facial expression, body posture, and, as you've now seen, even snapping. Their actions influence her willingness to take academic (and social) risks. Her response to her mistake is exemplary, mature, and humble; it reflects a young woman of character. But it also reflects a room in which psychological safety is combined with a palpable feeling that learning is a team sport. The room brings the best out of her; her response is hers but not hers alone.

In fact, eye tracking and nonverbal signals of affirmation and inclusion are present throughout the video; you can see it happening over and over. Recall the moment we described earlier, where Folusho is speaking.

Her classmates are turned to face her—Fagan, who is characteristically snapping along and trying to encourage others to snap, is an exception. One other student is looking at the problem on the board. But the norm is clear. We engage one another with our eyes when we talk.

To frame the vocabulary a little tighter, the concept of looking at the speaker is called tracking. The broader set of behaviors—showing one is interested, focusing and directing one's own attention in the most productive direction—is called Habits of Attention (that's the term Doug uses in Teach Like a Champion 3.0 if you want to read more about it). Like Props, it too involves giving recognition, approval, acknowledgment, and appreciation to another person. When we see it happening, we think of the social contract. A tiny demand (let's look at each other; let's do what we can to show we're interested even if we're sometimes not) and a massive payoff (we build a place where lessons light the room on fire, where we belong, and we maximize our chance to achieve our dreams) if we can get everyone to embrace it enough to build a visible norm.

The norm is evident in Denarius's room. You can see students using Habits of Attention while Folusho speaks, while Brittany speaks, while Fagan speaks, and while Jevaughn speaks.

And of course they also track Denarius. Some teachers see the benefit of peer-to-peer tracking but hesitate to ask for it themselves. They worry that it is authoritarian to ask students to track them.² Why, we ask, would we have a system that shows everyone in the room respect and affirmation, that reminds them that their voice matters, and exclude the teacher? Why would we want to signal that the teacher's words weren't also important? There are myriad reasons why tracking the teacher is beneficial to students (it helps them pay attention, for example; this and other reasons are summarized in Teach Like a Champion 3.0) but we would like to observe that signals of belonging and the consequent emotions also affect teachers. The same rules of biology apply. Feeling appreciated, supported, and affirmed in your classroom makes you happier and more confident, more connected to students emotionally, and almost assuredly a more successful teacher. It makes you a teacher who, like students, is not afraid to take the risks inherent in a learning! Should students track the teacher as well as peers? Should they reaffirm the social contract implicit in a positive learning environment with their teacher too? Of course!

It's worth noting that a teacher's gaze is also an important signal. (That it's obvious does not mean it's not worth reflection.) Of course giving students eye contact when they speak shows them we are listening. It's an important habit, and a great way to model for students which signals to send and how, as you'll soon see Fran Goodship do in a video from her classroom in London, England. But it's also a habit you seek “in the aggregate”—you can't be looking at the speaker every moment when you are responsible for a class of 30. In fact, occasionally gazing around briefly while students are talking can be a reminder to others that you are looking to see if they are engaging (and it's important to make sure everyone is on task). We'll see an example of that in Fran's classroom as well.

But symmetricality of gaze is also worth some reflection. Wharton Business School Professor Ethan Mollick recently wrote about a study by So-Hyeon Shim and colleagues,³ which found that, in Mollick's words, “when leaders gaze positively at group members who might otherwise be left out, other people in the group listen to that person more.” Similarly, when we work with teachers, we often remind them of how important individual eye contact is and asks them to include it when practicing such common tasks as giving directions or asking questions. Establishing eye contact with a wide range of individuals, even fleetingly, is far more effective than looking generally “at the group.”

You can see Denarius do this quite clearly in the first moments of his video. “Go ahead and take 30 seconds to silently, independently evaluate the two solutions that I saw,” he says. As students study the problem, Denarius is not looking past students at the back wall for example. He is not looking down at his notes or at the board. He is not sweeping smoothly across the room in a scan. He is looking around the room with his eyes fixing very briefly on individual students. He is “looking at their eyes” and in so doing both affirming them—I see you and acknowledge you—and helping them to feel lovingly accountable.

HABITS OF DISCUSSION: TALKING TO, NOT PAST, EACH OTHER

Let's go back to the moment in Denarius's class where Folusho responds to what Vanessa has said at the start of the discussion. As we noted earlier, Folusho says, “Okay, I agree with Vanessa. I think [answer] A is finding the reciprocal, and reciprocal and inverse are not the same thing.” Her words reflect another apparently mundane but crucial belonging signal that is constantly communicated by and among students in Denarius's classroom.

Folusho begins by making clear reference to Vanessa's previous comment. She references what Vanessa said briefly (“I think A is finding the reciprocal” is a restatement of Vanessa's point), credits her by name, and then describes how her thoughts connect (I agree and intend to extend her idea). In doing so she has communicated the importance of Vanessa's words. She was listening to her classmate carefully and thinks her words matter. That may sound trivial, but too often in classrooms the opposite occurs. A student like Vanessa speaks and the next student to talk doesn't give the slightest indication that the previous comment mattered or ever occurred. Perhaps her point is totally unrelated. The message is: no one thought that was worth responding to. Sometimes a student will actually begin with a phrase like, “What I was gonna say was …” The subtext is: “What Vanessa just said, to the degree I was even listening, irrelevant. My comment is exactly the same as it would have been if she had never spoken.” The response by their peers for thousands of Vanessas, suggests their comments are largely irrelevant to their peers. Just as often this message is delivered by silence. If after your comments no one responds at all, if they provoke no indication that they appear relevant or valuable to your peers, you soon learn to stop speaking.

Just as we are all frequently in Folusho's shoes, wondering as we speak if our words make sense and buoyed by the indication in the snapping that we are doing fine, so too we are all frequently in Vanessa's shoes—asking ourselves after we speak: Should I have said that? Did people value, hear, or care about what I said?

The anxiety that your words will be ignored is a much more prevalent part of our lives than it was 20 years ago—times a thousand for young people. The Like button is the driver of compulsive social media use. Young people post their thoughts and then check their likes and then check and check again because they yearn for confirmation that their peers valued what they said. This should remind us of how powerful affirmation is and how much we crave it after we speak. We speak because we want what we say to be relevant to others—at least that should be one of the major purposes of speaking—and afterwards we are waiting for the room to tell us whether it was.

In the classroom, the answer to the question did people value what I said comes primarily from peers rather than the teacher—especially for students above the primary grades. Like the signals we discussed in Habits of Attention, it is communicated in a language of signals that are often overlooked. The average student looks out across the room, having just answered a question, and just as likely sees precious few signs of response or interest. If signals of affirmation occur, it is an accident. Mostly this serves to remind her that she is disconnected from many of her peers—or at least she is when she is engaged in the work of the classroom. She leaves the room and is primed to affirm or earn belonging with peers in other ways.

Wondering whether your words were ignored, irrelevant, or scorned is a strong disincentive against participation. Or it can be a strong incentive to turn a discussion into an argument in which the purpose is to win, to prove that your words mattered. That divides people, rather than connecting them.

Interestingly, if Folusho had disagreed with Vanessa but in doing so had said something like, “I saw it differently from Vanessa,” she would still be affirming what Vanessa said—responding with respect, validating the importance and relevance of the comment. That might seem paradoxical but it's still important: She doesn't have to agree to make Vanessa feel affirmed and important. If she responds to Vanessa but respectfully disagrees with her, she sends far more positive reinforcement, far stronger signals of belonging, than if she shared an opinion that was in agreement with Vanessa but made no reference to her contribution. Doubly so if she rephrased a bit of what Vanessa's said. (“I saw it differently from Vanessa. I don't really think this is a reciprocal.”) She would be demonstrating that she was listening carefully to what Vanessa had said and thinking about her argument. Listening carefully and responding to someone's ideas is a belonging signal, even if you don't agree with them. (In fact it can make it easier to disagree cordially.) Because such signals are subtle, we often overlook it when they fail to occur, but they are crucial to building an optimal classroom culture.

Is it necessary to point out that listening is not just a critical skill but possibly a dying one? Careful listening is one of the first things that goes in a world of fractured attention. It is rarely modeled in the click-bait world of social media, where the goal of much communication is not to engage in substantive discussion but to score points, garner likes, and “call out” those who disagree. Is it necessary to point out that when we aren't listening to the people we're talking to (or at), conversation drives us apart instead of connecting us? Glancing at our political process should give us pause to think about the way we run discussions in the classroom: points given for loud and emphatic opinions forcefully stated, but few if any for listening well, seeking to understand, or resisting the temptation to assume one has found the “obviously” right after just a few seconds of reflection. We live in a world where people fold their arms and turn away after they stop speaking; the message is that they are so committed to their point of view that potential responses don't really matter, could not possibly influence them. The social and political costs of this are immense and we should be careful not to reinforce it in our teaching.⁴ The fact that social media socializes people to talk past each other, to dismiss one another's words, makes it doubly important to build an affirming environment in the classroom.

This technique that Denarius uses to do this is called Habits of Discussion. It involves students making a practice of referring to or rephrasing a previous comment, referencing by name the person whose point it was, and situating their own argument in connection to it:

• “I agree because …”
• “I disagree because …”
• “Another example of what Vanessa is talking about is …”
• “I'd like to build on what Vanessa said earlier …”
• “I saw it differently from Vanessa …”
• “I think you could interpret that slightly differently …”

If you listen carefully to the video of Denarius's class and others we feature here, you can hear such phrases again and again.

Jevaughn, speaking after Omowunmi's explanation of the solution about three minutes into Denarius's lesson, says, “Now that I think about it, I agree with Omowunmi….” Could anything make Omowunmi feel more affirmed for her effort to explain what she thinks the class has learned?

Fagan uses a subtler example about a minute and a half into the clip. Typically, she's pretty into the debate but even so she begins, “Also, you could just work it backwards.” The word “also” is a tiny reminder to the room that she is picking up where Folusho left off.

Even Denarius uses the technique! “Yeah, so I agree with Omowunmi and Jevaughn,” he says, putting a bow on the discussion.

Belonging is a flame, Daniel Coyle tells us, one that needs to be constantly fed by tiny signals. The habit of affirming, restating, and reacting intentionally to previous speakers sends a constant stream of those signals, even when the speaker disagrees.

THE TOOLS IN SYNERGY

Between the systems for snapping, eye-contact with speakers, nonverbal positive reinforcement, and verbal affirmation, Denarius's classroom is literally full of signals that build belonging. And those signals are frequent because he has created systems to communicate and magnify them. They are most evident when students engage in scholarly work that reflects their ambition and purpose.

You can also see a lovely model of how these three techniques come together in the video BreOnna Tindall: Habits. After some initial writing and a Turn and Talk at the beginning of the video, BreOnna calls on Adriel to share first. It's a Cold Call so it's doubly important for Adriel to feel the love. “We're going to go ahead and Track Adriel,” BreOnna says, “So snap it up for Adriel.” She's smiling warmly here, both at Adriel and his classmates.

Here's what it looks like as Adriel (on the far left) prepares to respond.

The signals of belonging and support are both visual (tracking and smiling; everyone looks sincerely interested) and auditory (a rolling wave of snaps). The snaps even buy Adriel a moment to compose himself.

A side note here: some people argue that Cold Call (calling on students who have not raised their hand to volunteer) is harsh and invasive. We argue the opposite. Asking Adriel his opinion and singling him out for a chance to speak tells him that his voice matters. “Of all the people in the room,” BreOnna is saying, “we'd love to hear what you think, Adriel.” There's almost nothing that could be more inclusive, and by facilitating his success through Props, Habits of Attention, and Habits of Discussion, BreOnna is helping to build his confidence. When he does well, as he does here, he's also rewarded by spontaneous snapping from his peers, and he is suddenly far more likely to think that speaking in class is something he can do well. He's far more likely to volunteer.⁵

Renee gets called on next and again we can see and feel the warm glow of her classmates' focus shifting toward her. The image here shows what their signals of belonging look like.

Notice how carefully BreOnna models the body language of interest and attentiveness throughout. They're good at it in part because she models it so carefully. There's spontaneous snapping while Renee speaks and class-wide snapping (reinforced by BreOnna's nonverbal reminder) afterwards. The video closes with Nylah answering and again she is affirmed by earnest eye contact, the appearance of genuine interest, and a rolling wave of snaps.

Habits of Discussion are also hard at work. BreOnna asks Tano to “build” off of Renee—that is, she reminds him to use Habits of Discussion to refer to Renee's idea. And we can see the work she's done to teach connecting phrases like the ones we provided above because Nylah begins, “I'd like to respectfully disagree with you….” She's taken the idea that if we disagree well, it can still connect us in a community and reinforced it by including “respectfully” in the phrase. This not only makes Tano feel affirmed, but it may make Nylah more likely to share her true opinion because it does not seem to imply a conflict with a peer.

YES, BUT HOW DO I DO THAT?

The challenge of the videos we've been watching is that the systems Denarius and BreOnna rely on are already deeply embedded in their classrooms by the time these lessons occur, so it's hard to see the steps they took to set them up. It would in some ways be more helpful to see them on day one, rolling out and explaining: This is how we'll snap for each other. This is how we'll strive to look at each other. This is how we should connect our ideas in discussion. Here is why we will do those things.

While we don't have first-day video of Denarius and BreOnna—while in fact there is no single first day but rather a series of days when the ideas were explained and tirelessly reinforced—we do have first-day video of Habits of Discussion from Ben Hall's classroom. (See Ben Hall: Habits of Discussion Rollout.) Ben teaches at Ipswich Academy in Ipswich, England, and the video shows him not just using Habits of Discussion for the very first time but showing his students how it will work and letting them experience a successful discussion.

Buy-in, as our colleague Paul Bambrick observed, is an outcome, not a prerequisite. So Ben's goal in the video is not just to explain Habits of Discussion to his class but to have them feel what it's like to have a collaborative conversation about a challenging topic. So he's chosen to begin installing Habits of Discussion with a lesson with real content to discuss: the death penalty in Britain. Importantly, this is a topic they have spent several lessons studying. When participants are well-informed, discussions are fact-based and connected. When participants lack knowledge, they fall back on emotion and sometimes invective. This pushes them apart more than drawing them together. Obviously, that's not what Ben wants.

Not surprisingly, then, his first move is to ask students to review their notes and familiarize themselves with arguments they'd made for and against the death penalty. Interestingly, they've had to do both. That is, he has asked them to make a case in writing for both sides of the issue before he asks them to argue their opinion. We love this move. So often, we note, young people are encouraged to share their opinion right away—and this quite obviously forces them to formulate an opinion about an issue instantly. But smart people, we note, often delay forming an opinion on an issue until they have gathered all of the evidence and reflected on it for some time. There is no rush—or shouldn't be.

As a side note, a belief in the value of delaying making up one's mind could be reflected in the language a teacher uses during discussion. BreOnna asks Tano to “build”—she doesn't encourage him to take sides, just expand. Denarius asks students to “agree, disagree, or build.” These phrases stand in contrast to the phrase “agree or disagree” that we more commonly hear teachers use. By itself, “agree or disagree” suggests that those are the only two options: one side or the other; argue for or argue against. Adding the option to “build” specifies a way to participate and reflect without deciding, subtly suggesting that it may still be too early for formulating opinions.

Ben gives his students a bit of time to look over their previous thoughts but interestingly they are so familiar with Turn and Talk that they assume that's what he's asked them to do and the room instantly bursts into peer discussions. Ben quickly steps in. “Sorry, guys. I meant to be clear. Don't discuss it. We're looking and thinking now.” Notice his exemplary use of the technique Assume the Best⁶—Ben presumes his own lack of clarity was the most plausible explanation for students not following directions and shows that was the first thought to cross his mind. And even though there's been a miscommunication about the task, we can already tell from the response that this is a classroom where students read the norm to be active and engaged participation. This, as we will discuss, is in large part a product of clear and well-installed routines for commonly occurring tasks like Turn and Talk.

After a bit of discussion, Ben next uses the Turn and Talk his students were expecting. He's allowing them to rehearse points they might make in the whole group first, in a lower-stakes environment. Rehearsal, in this case, means not only that you get to say it once and sort out your words so you are clearer and more confident if you say it later, but also that you get to see how a peer responds. You can look for signals of affirmation—nodding or following up on your point enthusiastically—to tell you a bit more about your initial thought and perhaps help you to refine it.

After the silent review and the brief rehearsal via Turn and Talk, Ben introduces Habits of Discussion. Notice that he explicitly calls it a model, implying that it's something they'll use over and over. He presents a slide that contains three especially important pieces of information.

First it outlines how the discussion will work. Ben will ask someone to open. Others will weigh in. Someone will be chosen to summarize. He's going to be Cold Calling, so students are doubly incentivized to listen carefully. It's especially nice that he's provided a last step to discussion that focuses on connection rather than division. The discussion ends with a summary of what we—all of us—said and talked about rather than one person stating a final opinion of a single perspective.

Second, Ben gives students potential “roles” they can play: Instigator, Builder, Challenger, Summarizer. There's subtle brilliance to this. Naming the roles helps students to understand the purposes of what they might do in a discussion. He names some things that might not be obvious: builders, who expand ideas, are an important part of a discussion. And in Ben's classroom, disagreeing isn’t arguing, it's challenging. That's a much more collegial and group-oriented framing. And the idea of calling them “roles” allows students to participate in the discussion with a bit of psychological safety. He has asked them to take a position, to express an opinion, but it's a “role”. A student who says something that does not perfectly express what they think can step back from it a bit afterwards (I was just playing a role). Perhaps they were even the instigator just to choose that role. It allows students to distance themselves from every opinion they express. They can disagree or make a mistake or change their minds without making it seem personal. If friendships are strained by disagreement that might emerge, there's an easy way back: I was (or you were) playing the role of challenger.

In fact, after Andy opens the discussion, Ben calls on Sam using language that reminds everyone that he will be playing a role. “Sam, what would you like to be?”

Sam responds, “I'll be a challenger and I disagree with you, Andy.” He very clearly refers to himself as playing one of the roles Ben has outlined. He appears to find the lowering of stakes reassuring and accepts it. Perhaps he's going to see Andy on the playground at recess in an hour and wants to keep the discussion of sensitive topics at arm's length. In playing a role, he can disagree or experiment with ideas at minimal risk.

Notice next the useful starter phrases Ben provides for students to use on his slide. These echo the sorts of phrases we heard students using in Denarius's class. They show students how to connect their ideas but also subtly prompt them to think about ways to engage a discussion beyond merely arguing for or against. Yes, there are “I agree/disagree because” starter phrases, but there are also phrases like “Building on that idea,” “Linking to that idea,” and “It could be argued that …” The last phrase in particular is a beautiful example of a tactful and subtle way to raise a dissenting opinion while respecting the other person's opinion. (I'm not saying I know for sure or that I hold this opinion; I'm just saying that someone could argue it.)

Notice crucially that Ben projects the slide and keeps it up on the screen for students to see throughout the ensuing discussion. It's no coincidence that students use these phrases throughout. (Many of them are highlighted in yellow in the video's subtitles.)

Notice that Lily, invited via Cold Call⁷ to share her perspective, summarizes what Rhys has said rather impressively, even though she disagrees. She demonstrates both that she understands his argument and that she sees it differently; she shows respect and appreciation even while she challenges her classmate. You could argue that community is built in that moment, even though there is open disagreement. That is truly a rare thing these days.

Next, Joe is invited into the conversation, and he references both Andy's and Rhys's comments. Rhys, Sam, and Lily have all spoken since Andy offered his opinion and, it's worth noting, Joe still remembers it! Certainly this sends a clear message to Andy about the influence of his words. It also suggests that the importance the process places on responding is having an effect on students' listening.

It's also worth noting that both Lily and Joe are not using the phrases exactly as Ben has proposed them, though other students do. As we noted at the outset, he's given them a model and they are already adapting it. This is important because when we discuss classroom systems, sometimes people say that it entails scripting people's behavior and subverting their autonomy. It's telling them what to say. But this underestimates students. People copy briefly and then, because they are smart and independent-minded, begin to adapt and internalize almost immediately, making any system their own. We see that with the snapping in Denarius's classroom. You might argue it's scripted or perhaps even proscriptive, but in fact the students use it in their own style and adapt it. That's what's happening with the “scripted” phrases here. A script is a great way to learn a model, but it doesn't remain a script for very long. It's the same with the phrases Ben has provided here. We're not even through the first application and students are already adapting the phrases to make them their own.

Back in Ben's class Sienna is speaking now. She begins by “building off of Lily's idea,” again a reference to a previous comment demonstrating listening and affirming her classmate's contribution. We can't see Lily, but she must feel important in this moment. Very quickly—in a span of five minutes—students have figured out how to use Ben's model to talk to one another, to weave comments into a discussion.

The clip ends with Ben calling on Katie to summarize. Frankly, she crushes it, ably describing the range of viewpoints expressed by her classmates in a way the people who held those opinions would probably accept as accurate. Notice the way that she even self-corrects slightly. She beings, “We discussed that most people think …” but then she reconsiders. Actually the room was pretty evenly split. What she had assumed was the majority was in fact not quite so clearly so. “A lot of people think we should …” she says, suggesting how carefully she's listened to the arguments and how well she's been able to read the overall position of the room. She also appears quite comfortable with the disagreement. This is not a room where opinions are motive tests. It's safe to have a conversation. We shouldn't discount this. Many or possibly most students do not think it is safe to share all of their opinions in classrooms. A recent survey of almost 20,000 college students by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonpartisan nonprofit group, found that more than 60% self-censor their opinions in classroom discussions.⁸ Those numbers obviously aren't for K–12 classrooms, but they suggest a larger social problem that is almost surely present in our schools as well and that has deep psychological effects. It's hard to feel like you belong in a classroom where you can't express your opinion openly.

HABITS OF (LITTLER) DISCUSSIONS

Habits of Discussion is important enough that it deserves another video, and the one we'd like to share is especially valuable because it shows how the technique can be used (and taught) with much younger students. Crucially it also shows how a teacher can pay special attention to interpersonal and conversation skills that are especially important to young people right now (and sorely lacking for many).

In the video, Fran Goodship of Solebay Primary Academy in London is hard at work teaching her year-one students how to have a discussion. A useful point for context: our video of Fran was shot in the first weeks of the 2021–22 school year, which means that many of Fran's charges have never spent a normal school year—or indeed a normal social year—as children. That is, one without isolation and limited social contact.

Fran has asked students to talk about why a character in a story named Matthew might want to be invisible. Notice that, like Ben, she tells students that they are going to have a discussion so they can be aware of the context in which the skills she is teaching will apply.

She starts by calling on Tiber. Notice the instant response from his peers. They turn and face him and he is affirmed by signals of belonging. But notice Fran as well, and how demonstrably she is modeling the sort of body and facial language that shows interest and connection. Here she is tilting her head in a show of interest as Tiber talks:

There are several reasons she might do this. First, while it true for older students that the social cues from peers are usually far more influential in shaping motivation and behavior than the responses of teachers, that is less clearly the case for younger students who, obviously, are much more interested in pleasing their teacher and who are much more likely to attend to her in particular. So it's important that Fran send signal affirmation to him as well, especially as his comments stretch to thirty seconds or so. “You're doing fine,” her attentive body language is saying. But of course she is also modeling to his classmates how to look interested and affirming. And in fact throughout the lesson she makes a point of modeling in a slightly exaggerated way how to send nonverbal signals of belonging. Younger students don't yet know what is implicit to Denarius's students. What do I do with my face and body to show I appreciate what you are saying? Fran models that throughout.

Tiber’s a bit nervous perhaps and he says quite a bit but hasn't really answered the question. This is common among younger students (and sometimes older ones) and highlights an important discussion skill—attending to the question we are asking. It's much easier to work together toward figuring something out if what we're talking about is clear, so Fran brings Tiber’s attention back to the question. She also signals to a classmate to put her hand down so Tiber can continue without anxiety or distraction. We've spoken about positive signals of belonging. It's also worth noting that a hand raised while you are talking can be a signal to a speaker that people in the room are “done” with what you've said, and have decided it's their turn to respond. In that case it's a good bet they are no longer listening. It's a significant disincentive to talk.

After persisting bravely, Tiber starts to get the group closer to answering the question. Notice the snapping that Fran uses here. She hasn't installed the system of props fully yet but is beginning to model to familiarize students with it—it's something that happens when you are doing well. She also very briefly wiggles her fingers at him. She's in the early stages of familiarizing them, in much the same way, with the idea of sending “shine.”

She's now called on Isha, and the significance of the language she uses to do so—“Building … Isha …”—should now be clear. It's a cue for Isha to connect her idea to Tiber’s and to weave together a conversation. Again as Isha begins answering you can see clear and slightly exaggerated body language modeled by Fran. She's making a point of showing what “interested” looks like. She's even touching her ear to suggest to students: This is what I look like when I am listening carefully.

Fran is incredibly attentive to her eye contact, to making sure Tiber and Isha know she's listening carefully but notice that at least twice as Isha is talking Fran very briefly glances at other students as if to remind them that they should be tracking Isha too.

Isha has suggested that, in the story, Matthew is embarrassed by the fleece he is wearing. Fran, in response, makes another brilliant move to amplify belonging signals. “Put your hand up if you think Matthew was embarrassed in paragraph one,” she says and every hand goes up. She wants Isha to know she's done well and is on the right track, but she wants the signal to come from her peers. Peer approval is powerful, we've noted, even if in the primary grades at least it may be slightly less so than the teacher's approval. But here Isha gets both. Her move here also accomplishes a bit of what Denarius achieves when he asks his students to snap if they agree with the final answer. They get to affirm their agreement with Isha's insight and feel more connected to the norms Fran is building.

After a quick summary of the discussion so far, Fran calls on Jamillah, asking her if she agrees with Isha and Tiber. Notice that she points to Jamila to orient her classmates to where she is and remind them to track her—this directs their attention so they listen better and also results in Jamillah feeling listened to. She wiggles her fingers a bit, “sending magic” style to make being called on feel a bit more celebratory. That's a lovely detail to add given that it's a Cold Call. The Cold Call is clearly an invitation—what's more inclusive than asking someone their opinion?—but the lighthearted gesture adds to the positivity.

Zara is next and again Fran asks her to build on what Jamillah has said. There's so much consistency here from Fran. Again she's modeling what positive nonverbal listening looks like. Again she's asking students not just to participate but to connect their ideas.

Unprompted, Zara comes through with a beautiful connecting phrase: “I would like to add to what Jamillah said,” showing that she has already internalized the details of how one converses in a way that connects ideas and honors other participants.

IT MIGHT GET LOUD: ADDING TURN AND TALK AND CALL AND RESPONSE

In the first weeks back from the pandemic, things were going well at Marine Academy Plymouth, in Plymouth, England. “We'd come a long way in terms of routines in the classroom,” Assistant Vice Principal Jen Brimming told us. Familiar procedures like Everybody Writes⁹ and Cold Call got all of the students involved in class regularly. There was a lot of thinking going on and the thinking was usually of good quality. But it felt a little less energetic than the teaching staff wanted it to be. It felt a little quiet. “It was a bit like a cathedral,” Brimming said, “really productive but also fairly silent.” This observation is important from a belonging point of view. We want to make students working hard and enjoying learning to be visible to one another. If they don't see clearly how engaged their peers are, it won't influence them as much. There won't be something clear to belong to.

One of the keys to happiness, Martin Seligman reminds us, is engagement—losing oneself in an activity that draws you in with energy and momentum. People (including Seligman) often use the word “flow” to refer to this. The term was coined by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who studied it for much of his career. Flow states, Csikszentmihalyi points out, are profoundly pleasing to humans. Losing track of time, engaging fully, especially as part of a group, is a powerful draw, perhaps, as suggested in Chapter 1, for evolutionary reasons related to the importance of tasks like persistence hunting in our survival. Either way, Csikszentmihalyi observes, “the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”¹⁰

If we want students to feel connected to the classroom, it's important for them to feel the kind of momentum and forward progress we see in Denarius's classroom where students bound quickly from task to task while also thinking deeply and learning extensively. Most often that comes about via familiar routines guided by clear, crisp directions: “We're a little divided. Turn and Talk with your partner. Go.”

So Jen and her colleagues set out to build momentum. They wanted the sound of classrooms to communicate vibrancy and belonging and they chose two routines to add to their arsenal: Turn and Talk, and Call and Response.

Another side note: there is an implicit presumption that there should be an overall ethos to how teaching works and classrooms feel across the school in the staff's discussion of the school's overall feel and this too is no small thing. It's hard to build culture by yourself. Things like Habits of Discussion or the moves Jen and her colleagues decided to try are much more powerful and much more likely to take hold if they are happening schoolwide. If students walk into any classroom and expect to build off of speakers and show their appreciation for their classmates' ideas nonverbally, they will pick up the habit quickly. If it happens in some classrooms but not others, it will be far less likely to become second nature to them. Denarius's classroom and BreOnna's classrooms also give credit to their colleagues who were working on the same set of culture-building tools and whose shared commitment helped them succeed.

Done well, Turn and Talk makes a habit of having short discussions with a partner. That, in and of itself, is a good way to build connections. But Turn and Talk also lets students rehearse ideas before a whole group discussion so they are more likely to engage and feel connected during those activities. And even beyond that, Turn and Talk sounds like community. Think of the sound of the room when Denarius released his students to the Turn and Talk at the beginning of his lesson. The room crackles to life. That sound is also a signal to students—about energetic engagement, by the whole class, on cue. It says energy and positivity and belonging.

And don't sleep on Call and Response. In every culture on earth, people sing and chant to cement their membership in the group. Group singing and chanting are explicit parts of worship in every religion. When we sing or chant together we are visibly and audibly in unison. We affirm our connectedness and the idea that we are a meaningful group. The historian William McNeil coined the phrase “muscular bonding” to describe “the sense of euphoric connection that is sparked by performing rhythmic movements in unison to music or chanting.”¹¹ Everyone feels its pull, he posited, and marching, dancing, or chanting together were part of the key institutions that framed society and identity. Think religion, the military, politics, sports.

Done even briefly, communal chanting or singing can have a profound effect, but it's also something our rational, individualist selves are likely to overlook. Still in its ability to send belonging signals to the group, Call and Response recalls again Daniel Coyle's observation: “Belonging feels like it happens from the inside out, but in fact it happens from the outside in.” Students feel like they belong because they act like they belong.

You can see these two techniques bring Jen's classroom to life in the video Jen Brimming: Reprehensible.

Jen starts by introducing the word of the day, reprehensible. She signals nonverbally for students to repeat it Call and Response style. They all see that everyone else has responded with enthusiasm. We are five seconds into class and an active, engaged culture has already been reinforced. Immediately after, she asks students to jot the definition in the books and they snap to it with energy and spirit. They've taken two discrete actions within 12 seconds and a student in the room has seen everyone around him participate twice in that span of time. The sense of flow is palpable and a norm of active, engaged, connected participation has emerged. There's also a pleasurable sense of team. Some people presume that students won't like this sort of thing, that Call and Response is somehow a bit controlling, but the students, for their part, appear quite happy with it.

After two students are called to read the definition and an example, Jen asks students to jot down their “first thoughts” about why stealing from a charity is reprehensible. Notice the formative language. No one hesitates to write “first thoughts” out of fear they will be wrong because the phrase suggests they will refine their answers anyway. The word “jot” also lowers the stakes. It's hard to miss the effect of the fast start here. It's engaging and energetic and draws students in with its momentum: it's a case study in building flow. In Jen's class you're always thinking or chatting or writing. It's the class where you look up and suddenly 45 minutes have passed.

This is useful as a reflection in a time of socioemotional challenge. Teachers may be tempted to start class by “checking in”: asking how students are in an unscripted manner. Going around the room attempting to engage as many members of the class as possible: “What about you, Casey? Good weekend?” One downside of this is that the lesson starts slowly. Students may tune out. Students may feel like their time is not being put to good use.

We're not saying there isn't benefit to checking in with students. We are wondering if there's a better time, in many cases, than the beginning of class. Get started right away, we say. Engage students. This will make them happy. If they are busy, they will feel that you value their time and this tells them they are important. You can see that, perhaps, in their response to the Turn and Talk Jen sends them off to about one minute into the video. We've seen a lot of rooms bursting to life in response to a crisp Turn and Talk delivered with clear, sharp, speedy directions but this one may take the cake.

Terry-Anne is called on to answer and the belonging signals that surround her should now look familiar. The class—reminded to track by Jen as she calls on Terry-Anne—turn and smile encouragingly. After Jen asks, “Do you agree?” the snapping expresses affirmation of Terry-Anne’s answer. At about a 1:45 there's another speedy and engaging Turn and Talk, again with punchy language to release students to the task. In this case (and the previous one) Jen has let students raise their hands before the Turn and Talk—they've signaled that they'd like to answer and now she presents Turn and Talk as an opportunity for everyone to do so. The room is practically bursting with energy and a group ish vibe—all of us together in an almost orchestrated way knowing exactly how to do the tasks of learning is actually fun. Phoebe offers to answer. She's rewarded with tracks and snaps—this time spontaneously from her classmates. It feels like a round of applause but faster. Who wouldn't want to participate?

By the time she asks students to make a connection to a new word, Jen's got every hand in the air. When Katie answers “hypocrite” the class repeats it in unison. (Repeating vocabulary words is extremely helpful as pronouncing them is critical to reading them and using them in future encounters.) Next there's another round of Turn and Talk, with the student called to answer afterwards greeted with tracks and rewarded with snaps, belonging signals over and over, energy and momentum, not to mention a palpable and almost predictable rhythm to class. It's fast-paced and engaging. Students know what's likely to come next. It feels like basketball or soccer or tennis practice—both in the pace and the team-like coordination and connection.

As we see in Jen's class, Turn and Talk and Call and Response can facilitate belonging, causing socializing students to participate frequently and with spirit. This can cause them to see their role in the classroom differently. Belonging often happens from the outside in, Daniel Coyle reminds us. I see myself participating enthusiastically and start to perceive that I am enthusiastic about school.

MEANS OF PARTICIPATION MAKES “HOW TO PARTICIPATE” TRANSPARENT

Means of Participation is a phrase we use to describe the format in which you want students to answer your question. “Do you think Jonathan is the villain in the story?” is a very different question depending on whether you'll ask students to answer it by writing out their “first thoughts” quickly on paper (i.e. Everybody Writes), Turning and Talking with a peer, answering in unison via Call and Response, or being called on to speak aloud (either as volunteers or via Cold Call). Planning how you will want students to answer a question is often as important as the question itself!

Choosing the right Means of Participation for a given question is most powerful when 1) we signal which Means of Participation we want students to use clearly and transparently, and 2) the procedures for each Means of Participation are deeply encoded in routine. Then they can engage unselfconsciously and energetically like Jen's students do.

So as you watch Jen's video, notice that it is always clear to students the format in which they should answer, how each form of engagement is familiar to them, and how Jen cues them consistently and transparently. It's the same four or five Means of Participation over and over in different combinations. She starts with a Call and Response, two Cold Calls, and an Everybody Writes. She signals the Call and Response with a gesture (hand by her ear). Students know what this means. Because it's so clear and they know how to do it, everyone calls out energetically and unselfconsciously. Cold Calling or taking volunteers is Jen's default (i.e. students assume that that's how they'll answer unless told otherwise) so she doesn't need to signal it. But her phrase “Jot down your first thoughts” delivered rapid fire releases students quickly into Everybody Writes, a routine they know well. The cue, in a sense, is part of the routine and she delivers it crisply and quickly so the room snaps to life (watch the back row react if you doubt us).

“Turn and talk with your partner, go!” works much the same way: it releases students to a familiar activity with a clear signal. They know exactly what to do and are more engaged in answering the question because the process is a habit. The material they are learning remains foremost in their conscious thinking. With this kind of clarity and familiarity the room bursts to life almost no matter which Means of Participation she chooses because students like knowing how to do things. They like not worrying whether they'll be the only one to join in.

One thing you might be noticing from Jen's class and several others (like BreOnna's, Denarius's) is how common Means of Participation work in synergy. There are frequently recurring pairings and sequences. A brief written reflection into a Turn and Talk is a regular sequence in classes like Jen's. Having written an answer gives you lots to talk about. So is Turn and Talk into whole group questioning, especially when it starts with Cold Call. If everyone has talked their ideas out, they'll be more confident and have more to say when called on. And again, when you send them to the Turn and Talk, they probably know there's a decent chance a Cold Call is coming. So they're ready.

A participant at one of our workshops came to this conclusion in notes that looked like this.

Silent Solo is the phrase that cues the activity of a quick independent minute of writing. That's part of what's so smart about what this teacher wrote. She's already thinking about the familiar phrases to cue the activities.

ACTIVE OBSERVATION: HIDDEN DRIVER OF RELATIONSHIPS

In the clip Nicole Warren: Busy you'll see a lot of things that by now look familiar. Nicole gets things off to a fast start. She asks for eyes up (i.e. Habits of Attention) and then immediately sends her students into a math song. That they love the song is pretty evident in their body language. Needless to say, they are also affirming their belonging to the group.

A few seconds later they're off to a Turn and Talk about the one thing they want to remember about rounding. The task explodes with energy. She's cuing a familiar routine with a familiar phrase. There's another little chant—a bit of Call and Response—before they pass out their independent practice packets. But notice also the second half of the video when Nicole circulates as students are working quietly at their desks. She's both responsive and present—responsive meaning she sees their work provides useful and timely feedback that helps them succeed (and feel successful), and present in that she is not distracted and is able to bring a full range of emotions. She is able to perceive things about students' moods and progress quickly.

This is in part because of her clipboard. She is taking notes on students' work so she can remember where they are. She has a clear answer to all the problems on the clipboard so she can check it easily and compare their answers to it. Her working memory is free to watch and connect with them.

This technique is called “Active Observation.” It means taking notes in writing as students work and preparing an ideal version of the right answer that you can look at while they work. It frees you to think about your students as you circulate and you can see this in Nicole's class. She connects over and over through the content with students. They feel her caring and a connection to the teacher because of how she gives them feedback and that is in some ways a product of her preparation and her careful note-taking.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

You can see a final version of many of the ideas we've discussed in this chapter come together beautifully in the video Erin Magliozzi: Keystone, from Erin's classroom at Memphis Rise Academy in Memphis, Tennessee.

Observing carefully—notice she is holding a clipboard—as students work independently, Erin notices that Jas has found the correct answer and makes a note to Cold Call her. This is an example of what we call “hunting, not fishing.” Erin has chosen Jas for a Cold Call based on her careful observation of student work. She knows Jas will get to shine. She will be successful, feel successful, and push the class in a productive direction with a good answer. As a result she Cold Calls without hesitation. As she does so, students turn and track Jas. They're sending magic. You can feel the love.

Jas answers well and there's snapping in affirmation. (Erin's got both snaps and shine working in her classroom.) Erin has also added a third signal to her classroom. Her students give her a thumbs-up to confirm that they've finished taking notes on Jas's answer. Not only does this let them indicate and thus reaffirm their engagement, but Erin uses the signal to give them the ideal amount of time to complete their task—not so short that it's rushed, not so long that pacing and flow suffer. Flow and thus belonging are accentuated by this signal. It also affirms their engagement: yes, we're ready; yes, we've all taken notes.

A side note here on note-taking. When Erin asks everyone to get Jas's answer down in their packets, she's done something useful in a variety of ways. Writing the answer encodes it in memory and it engages everyone in a productive task in a way that's unambiguously visible to everyone else. Everyone sees everyone else scribbling away. A norm has been set. But it is also a strong signal of affirmation. Think for a moment of what it feels like to be Jas. You are called on. Not only do you get affirmation from your peers, not only does your teacher tell you you've done well, but then everyone writes down what you said. Writing something down says it is important. This is a clear signal that your words carried weight. In fact, the only thing that could be more powerful than her classmates being told to write down what she's said would be making a comment and observing as your classmates spontaneously write down what you said. Message: what you said is so important I had to write it down. In classrooms where teachers consistently ask students to write things down because they are important, it becomes a habit and students are all the more likely to spontaneously initiate it of their own accord.

Like most things in the classroom, a behavior like that is made possible by a teacher's planning and the conditions are set for that here. Students in Erin's classroom all have a packet in which to write. She has made a habit of writing frequently and built the norm that everyone will write when asked. As with other norms, as students get used to it they start to own it. Pencils in hand, taking notes frequently, with space provided, they are far more likely to respond to Jas's words by writing them down of their own accord. That will be good for their learning and great for Jas's feelings of belonging in the classroom.

After they write down Jas's answer, students start to spontaneously signal to Erin that they're ready to move on. As you no doubt by now recognize, as they do this they are signaling their desire to keep going and making the norm of engaged participation visible.

From here students are off to three minutes of independent work with a partner. Erin walks around, clipboard in hand, making notes and giving feedback. She's not explicitly trying to build relationships and make kids feel seen and important; she's trying to teach them the content, but it clearly has that effect. Notice the affirmations, the snaps she gives to students, the “code” she establishes with one student so he can communicate his status privately.

Notice also that she takes careful notes of students who have good answers whom she can call on: Corey and Jaquie. There's another Turn and Talk, a bit of silent work, and then perhaps five minutes after she saw their answers, there's a lovely appreciative Cold Call for Corey and Jaquie, punctuated by snapping and shine. They're incredibly productive in Erin's classroom but there's so much support and belonging, both from peers and also from Erin, who's playful and warm and caring as she circulates, in large part because she's taking careful notes. She's not walking around for five minutes trying to remember whom she wants to call on and why.

SUMMARY: TECHNIQUES THAT AMPLIFY BELONGING

In this chapter we've tried to describe and show examples of a handful of teaching techniques that we think are especially crucial in building classrooms that embrace students and make them feel connected to peers and to the work of school. They're techniques that, taken together, increase and amplify a wide array of seemingly mundane signals that tell students they belong, that school is for them, that they are cared about and connected in school. At the same time these same tools help ensure that young people get the outstanding education they deserve. As we noted before, we refuse to countenance a trade-off between these two goals.

Briefly, the techniques we've described here are:

• Props: A system that allows students to affirm each other nonverbally as they learn. We've described how snaps and “sending shine” can do that. You can perhaps imagine more. We think it's an especially important place to start the discussion because it appears so small. We hope to have shown that classroom culture is often built of small things that are easily overlooked.
• Habits of Attention: The intentional application of our most foundational evolutionary behaviors—how we look at each other and how we encourage or discourage the things people do around us with our eyes, our expressions, and our attention. “The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity,” the philosopher Ludwig von Wittgenstein wrote. “One is unable to notice something—because it is always before one's eyes.” We spend so much time reading our status in the group in the fleeting gazes and glances of our companions that we hardly notice how profoundly it influences nearly everything we do. Attending to it is one of the fastest ways to make people feel a part of the work of schooling.
• Habits of Discussion: The deliberate shaping of the norms of how we talk to each other. “To” is a key word there. So much of communication now subtly dehumanizes and disconnects people—young people especially. We talk past one another. We talk at one another. Amplifying signals that we are really with the people we are talking to, that we are connected when we talk is a necessity we feel ever more strongly as we look out at a world full of missed opportunities for connection.

We discussed Turn and Talk and Call and Response together, though they are separate tools. One is a system to leverage short energetic peer-to-peer chats to bring energy and vigor to classrooms and build confidence in talking about academic ideas. Call and Response is the creation of opportunities to answer in unison—a fun and engaging act of togetherness we are apt to overlook.

When we combine Turn and Talk and Call and Response with a few other systematic ways to ask students to participate in the classroom—especially Cold Call, Volunteers, and Everybody Writes—we have a system of systems. Means of Participation is the name for the technique that combines these participation systems intentionally and signals them clearly to students so they can participate joyfully, energetically, and unselfconsciously and so lose themselves in the classroom and just possibly experience the state of flow—one of the most joyful mental states that humankind experiences.

Finally we discussed Active Observation—how the act of carefully attending to what students are doing in class lets us give them meaningful feedback simply and easily. This builds relationships and a sense of belonging through the work of learning. Doing well also frees our working memory as teachers so that we can be as attentive to the experience of individual students as possible.

You can study these techniques and others more deeply in Teach Like a Champion 3.0, but of the 63 techniques in that book, these are the ones we would emphasize most in response to the current state of society and the greater than ever needs of young people to connect and learn more successfully.

CODA: ORDERLY CLASSROOMS ARE CARING CLASSROOMS

One topic we have not discussed explicitly but which is implicit in every technique we've described, every video we have shown, and every moment of belonging created by the teachers in them is the necessity of orderliness in the classroom—humane and carefully designed orderliness, of course, thoughtfully reinforced by a caring and reflective teacher, but orderliness just the same. Every joyful moment you see in Erin's or Denarius's or BreOnna's or Jen's class begins with the fact that students are routinely on-task and reliably follow directions. They understand and respect the standards of behavior set by the community for the benefit of the group.

When Erin tells her students to work independently at noise level zero (i.e. silence) on the last question in her lesson, for example, there is the hum of silence in the room. In that moment her students are learning as they deserve to learn—with focus and without distraction. Erin circulates and interacts with students as they work. She could not be half so attentive to her charges if she was distracted by a student who refused to follow along and was instead making “hilarious” burping noises, or two who insisted on talking during the silent work time, or yet another who marched out of the classroom and thus caused Erin to follow.

The sense of togetherness and belonging that thrives among students—the belief that the teacher sees them and cares about each student's progress; the sense that classmates support one another's efforts to succeed—exist not despite but because of orderliness that Erin (and her school) have established.

Her students work in a room that honors their time and effort and tells them, in its orderliness and productivity, that they are important. By contrast, nothing could express more clearly that students simply weren't important to the institution (and society) than allowing their time and their opportunity to be wasted in a classroom where disruptions or distractions large and small were tolerated and even expected.

Or consider two additional clips, Denarius Frazier: Help and Madalyn McLelland: Write It Down, that demonstrate what is often the unspoken truth of classrooms. Teachers can only be fully responsive to students to whom they can give their full attention. As a result disorderly classrooms hurt the most vulnerable learners, the ones who need their teacher's support the most.

In the videos both teachers spot, and then spend significant time helping, students who are struggling academically. Notice how carefully they are able to attend to those students.

Denarius spends more than two and a half minutes helping a single student grasp the concept he's struggling with, and during that whole time, no one turns around to gawk, no disruption breaks Denarius's concentration. He doesn't have to redirect anyone. Every student remains productively on task. It's quiet so he can whisper and ensure privacy for his student.

The student, Denarius recalls, was a hard-working and curious young man whom he enjoyed teaching but who had knowledge gaps in his basic procedures dating back to middle school. He would make a mistake in his calculations, get a strange result, and become lost.

That's the case in the video. Walking by, Denarius notices his student doesn't have anything written on his paper. This strikes him as strange because they had been working the problem for some time. Perception—noticing that something was off with one student in a room of 30, is the key, and research tells us that perception relies on working memory.¹² If your mind is engaged in thinking about or forestalling or scanning for a dozen things that might go wrong, if the room is noisy and distracts your attention, your working memory will be engaged elsewhere. You will be unlikely to perceive the cues that can cause you to recognize that a student is struggling or confused or frustrated.

But Denarius notices right away and stops to investigate and explain. After a bit of discussion he believes the student has understood, but having started to walk away, glances back and again notices a dearth of “signals” he would expect to see if the student grasped the problem: pencil moving, the student flipping through the book or his notes, say, maybe just a change in posture. It's hard to describe with certitude exactly what signs we read in situations like these that communicate a student's emotional status, but only a calm, poised teacher whose mind is free to attend to such details and who is not battling distractions is likely to perceive them.

Or notice how pitch-perfect Madalyn's tone is, how her short, lilting phrases “Pause. It's okay. Write that down!” get a frustrated student back on track. You can't bring that kind of nuance to your tone if you're also raising your voice slightly, struggling to be heard. You can only be the geography whisperer if you can actually whisper and you can only do that in a quiet classroom.

Both of these beautiful, supportive, and patient interventions begin with perception—Denarius and Madalyn notice that a student is struggling. Because their rooms are orderly, it's easier for them to see when something is “off.” When things are calm, when you're not distracted, when there's a clear task and a clear expectation for how to complete it, suddenly you notice the look of confusion on a young man's face or that one of your students is stalling and not completing her work.

The sense of orderliness and predictability, combined with their meticulous preparation, make it possible for Denarius and Madalyn to respond to individual students' needs and avoid the assumption that students who appear disengaged or off-task don't care about completing the tasks before them.

As you surely know, building orderly climates is not simple. It is 10 times more challenging now, as so many students have returned to schools not just distracted and anxious but also out of practice at structure and expectation, having had far fewer interactions with institutions that socialize exchange and reciprocity. They are behind academically and have ground to cover. And just maybe they have been led to believe that being asked to meet expectations or accept the terms of a social contract is unreasonable, that to accept authority is to tolerate authoritarianism.

But authority is not authoritarianism; its careful exercise is an absolute necessity to the running of just, fair, humane, and effective classrooms. The argument that authority is akin to authoritarianism is an example of what the psychologist and writer Rob Henderson calls a “luxury belief”—an idea that confers social status on people who hold it but injures others in its practical consequences. The students who are harmed most by the idea that schools should not set and enforce clear rules for young people are the young people themselves, especially those who as a result do not learn how to control their impulses, delay gratification, and exert self-discipline, those who are left at the mercy of peer social norms that are powerful, negative, and costly.

We write further in Chapter 4 about some of the ways schools can think about how to address the root causes behind some students' nonproductive behavior. We agree, strongly, that schools must do better in how they respond when students behave counterproductively. But we also think it is a grave disservice to tell students it is okay to make a habit of behaving in ways that are counterproductive to the groups in their lives. Learning how to thrive within an institution and balance one's own goals and needs with those of the group is immensely valuable to people who expect to accomplish things as parts of groups in the future—that is to say, to almost anyone who wants to accomplish anything of value to society.

It is a gift of schooling for young people to learn how to join productively in the endeavors of their lives. The people who are harmed most by the belief that schools should not set and enforce rules with consistency and caring, in other words, are the students who behave poorly as a result.

Some nonproductive behavior is a result of the difficulties students face in their lives outside of school. Some of it, let's be clear, is not; people behave the way they do for a wide variety of reasons. You simply cannot say, “Student behavior is the result of X,” unless X is “a thousand different things.” In fact, one of the challenges with environments that are disorderly is that they make it more difficult for schools to allocate the appropriate resources and time to students who truly require extensive support because they are spending them on young people who are fully capable of choosing to behave differently. What's beautiful about all of the clips that we've watched is that the orderliness the teachers have instilled allows them to be especially attentive and responsive to the psychological needs of their students.