If you are anything like we were, one of our main goals at the beginning of the year was to build positive relationships with our students. We know the countless benefits having positive relationships can have on your students and classroom, so we always did the typical getting-to-know-you activities at the start of the year. However, we needed to find ways to keep those relationships growing with more than just those activities all year long. This is when we began to incorporate surprise and delight. So, in today’s episode, we’re sharing our five easy back-to-school surprise-and-delight ideas that you can use in your classroom this school year.

For all the resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.secondstorywindow.net/podcast/back-to-school-surprise-and-delight

Resources:

• The Happier Ladies Podcast, Episode 37: Romanticize Your Lunch
• AFMAT Electric Pencil Sharpener
• Connect with us on Instagram @2ndstorywindow
• Shop our teacher-approved resources
• Join our Facebook group, Teacher Approved
• Leave your review on Apple Podcasts!

Mentioned in this episode:

Grab The Holiday Headstart Playbook at https://theholidayheadstart.com/playbook And don't miss our new podcast, The Holiday Headstart: https://pod.link/1739162255

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Emily 0:37

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we've got some fun ideas of how to incorporate surprise and delight at the start of the year, and a teacher approved tip for adding a little delight to your lunch.

Heidi 0:50

We start our episodes with a morning message, just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. The Summer Olympics may be over, but we are just starting with the teacher Olympics. So this week's morning message is, name something that isn't an Olympic sport, but feels like an Olympic sport. And based on these responses, I think we all deserve some medals.

Emily 1:11

For sure. Jessica says copier repair, which feels like it's a timed event.

Heidi 1:16

Yeah, definitely.

Emily 1:18

Gina says managing transitions.

Heidi 1:21

Simone Biles can do a lot of things. I don't think she can get a bunch of first graders from their rug to their desks.

Emily 1:26

Not as efficiently as the teacher could, that's for sure. Lori says packing up at the end of the day, because that does feel like a triathlon, for sure. Danielle deserves a medal for doing report cards. Yep. And Joy takes golden sprinting for running to the bathroom during recess. Katherine has stories to tell for managing the car rider line.

Emily 1:49

Jan's Olympic sport is setting up her classroom, and Shelley's is getting ready for back to school. Those events feel more like they deserve cash prizes, and not just medals.

Heidi 1:58

Think we all deserve some cash prizes after this.

Emily 2:01

Maru would come in strong at parent teacher conferences, and Shelley deserves all the gold for running with the trash can to intercept a sick kid, because you know what's coming.

Heidi 2:10

Oh no.

Emily 2:12

Becky is still feeling it from the end of year assessments. Not that I can blame her. And Naisha has got state testing flashbacks.

Heidi 2:20

Those are both so rough.

Emily 2:22

April's already practicing for the Winter Olympic event of recess duty in the freezing cold, and Janice is competing against all of us to take the gold home on field trip day. And poor Janina just says teaching kindergarten.

Heidi 2:37

Yeah, I don't think any of us would argue with that one. Gold medals all around.

Emily 2:41

We'd love to hear about your non-sport Olympic event in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi 2:47

At the start of the school year, one of our main goals is to build a positive relationship with each of our students.

Emily 2:53

Although our motivation to build those positive relationships is that we genuinely care for these new little strangers in our rooms, the benefits go way past happy feelings.

Heidi 3:03

I read an article that said positive teacher student relationships have cascading benefits, and I love the image that that brings to mind. I picture a waterfall tumbling over jagged rocks to the river below. At the top of the waterfall, we have the initial investment of time and energy in creating those relationships.

Heidi 3:22

But that pours down into increased academic gains, increased engagement, willingness to take risks, more time on tasks, fewer behavior problems, boosted attendance rates, more student independence improved student mental health, increased confidence, easier, parent teacher communication, student cooperation, and an atmosphere of safety and belonging, and honestly, I could keep going if we had more time.

Emily 3:46

The benefit of these outcomes is robust for all students, but they have an even larger positive effect for our at risk students.

Heidi 3:54

Truly investing time and energy in building relationships with our students is the closest thing we have to a cure all in education. The only downside is that it requires being intentional.

Emily 4:05

We don't say that to make it sound simple or easy, being intentional requires a lot of effort, especially when you already have so much weighing you down. It's all you can do just to keep your head above water.

Heidi 4:17

But if investing in your classroom climate feels like one more burden. Try to reframe it by realizing that positive relationships will make all of those other burdens lighter. Plus having students who like you, makes being a teacher way more fun.

Emily 4:33

Oh that's for sure, true. We've shared a lot of ways to build your classroom community recently. Go back to Episode 148, if you want a refresher. But today we're talking about one of our very favorite ways to build positive relationships, surprise and delight.

Heidi 4:49

We first talked about surprise and delight in Episode 35 when we were little baby podcasters, and that was almost two years ago.

Emily 4:56

And if for some reason you didn't commit that whole episode to memory, first of all, rude, but I will give you a quick refresher. The term surprise and delight comes from the business world. The idea is that completely out of the blue, a business treats its customers to a valuable act of kindness with no strings attached.

Heidi 5:16

You've probably seen some form of this on social media. In one example, Kleenex scoured Facebook for posts where people mentioned that they were sick, and then they couriered 50 special Kleenex care packages to those sick people all over the world. And Kleenex care package is quite the tongue twister.

Emily 5:34

One of the surprise and delight campaigns I remember most was from an airline company. Before boarding, the airline asked the passengers what they wanted for Christmas, then when they went to pick up their luggage, instead of suitcases coming off the carousel, it was all their gifts, including a giant TV. It was a perfect Christmas ad.

Heidi 5:51

I just rewatched it for this episode, and I totally still teared up. I'm gonna go out on a limb, and I'm going to guess that none of us are working with giant TV money when it comes to our classrooms. Sadly, no. But surprise and delight doesn't have to cost anything, and the payoffs can be huge.

Heidi 6:09

Surprisingly, surprise is a magical way to strengthen relationships. A surprise shows that you care about someone. It shows that you understand them, and then put in the extra effort to do something to help them feel happy.

Emily 6:22

So how do we apply the tool of surprise and delight in our classrooms, especially at the beginning of the year?

Heidi 6:28

Luckily, it's way easier than it sounds. We have five teacher approved avenues of surprise and delight. They are one, change something. Two, add something. Three, celebrate something. Four, choose something. And five solve something.

Emily 6:43

Let's dive into our first avenue, change something. In the middle of January, you can get a lot of bang for your buck by making a change. You could change where the students do their math practice for a day, or change your schedule and teach afternoon subjects in the morning. But what can you change at the start of the year when students don't even know your routines yet?

Heidi 7:01

Well this is a little tricky, but we love a challenge. One thing you can do is change an experience from what's expected to what's surprising. Instead of giving a regular lesson, see if there's a way to give a cool lesson.

Emily 7:15

A lot of teachers like to start the year with lessons on kindness. You could change students' expectation by putting them in groups and giving each group a tube of dollar store toothpaste. Already the kids will be buzzing with anticipation. Then tell the kids to squeeze out all the toothpaste. Every kid's dream right? After all that toothpaste is in a bowl, hand each group some toothpicks, and tell them to start refilling the tubes. Obviously, this will be slow work, so just give them enough time, maybe five minutes, to see how much work it will take.

Heidi 7:43

Have everyone clean up, and then the lesson comes in. It is easy to say things words come out of our mouths all day long, the way that toothpaste comes out of the tube. If we say unkind words or uncomfortable words, they are out there. We can work to fix the hurt we cause but it's not easy, and things may never be exactly the same.

Emily 8:04

That's a lesson that will stay with kids for a long time, but doing something so big and out of the ordinary is a great way to help students connect with you, too.

Heidi 8:11

And you're not limited to toothpaste related activities. Fortunately, you could make a memorable impact by wearing a costume.

Emily 8:19

Or even just a hat, if you are like us and you're not a full costume person, usually.

Heidi 8:25

Well, I did have a feather boa and a big feathery pink pen that I sometimes used when I was teaching handwriting. I throw on the boa and I would bust out and over the top French accent as I showed them how to make their letters.

Heidi 8:40

Now I need to say this did not happen often, because, let's be honest, how often did I teach handwriting? Not often, and I didn't even do it every time we taught handwriting, because I wanted to keep the surprise part of the surprise and delight. Surprise keeps things interesting. And honestly, my kids were never more engaged than when Madame le Stylo was telling them that their sloppy letter Ts were making our pen weep.

Emily 9:06

Our second avenue of surprise and delight is to add something to your day. What if you surprised your class with an extra five minutes of recess one day? Or what if you came back from specialty class and let everyone in a round of super fast head, shoulders, knees and toes?

Heidi 9:20

Your kids would be grinning from ear to ear, and all that costs you was a couple of minutes.

Emily 9:25

You could also try adding something by integrating different subjects. Adding art to math is one of my favorite ways to delight students. You could have kids write skits to explain the water cycle, or go full Lin Manuel Miranda and have them write raps about history.

Heidi 9:39

Oh, dear. If you live in a place that's going to experience a change of season soon, is there a way to add the season to your classroom? Think about sensory experiences like sight, sound and even taste. Just be sure your changes aren't too distracting for your neurodivergent learners.

Emily 9:56

I love the idea of bringing fall into my class. Maybe one day I could give them tiny cups of apple cider to sip while we watch our weekly phonics video. The surprise doesn't have to fit the theme of the other activities we're doing. We don't have to be watching a fall video to enjoy a fall surprise. The point is that surprise and delight elevate any moment.

And it's also important to remember that these aren't rewards. Your students aren't earning these surprises. They're just little presses from you to say, I really like being your teacher, and I hope you like being my student.

Now let's get to the really fun avenue of surprise and delight, celebrate something.

We love any excuse for a party and with surprise and delight, you don't actually need an excuse. Wanting to celebrate is reason enough. So why not bust out a 30 second dance break just because it's a Wednesday afternoon?

Once of our very favorite celebrations happened on the second day of school. As second grade teachers, we loved to celebrate the second day of second grade.

It was such a lovely change of pace to have an afternoon of just playing games together and getting to know each other while we talked about all things related to the number two.

Celebrating the first day of first grade might be hard, since the first day is already a big celebration, but you could do the third day of third grade.

Or you could skip ahead and celebrate the end of the first week of first grade, or the fourth week of fourth grade. It might be nice to have a low key little party to look forward to in a couple weeks. Just remember to keep it a surprise for your class.

Also take a peek at the calendar. Anyone can celebrate the big holidays, but only the best kind of people celebrate the ridiculous ones and FYI talk like a pirate day is September 19.

You can keep your celebrations simple without losing their importance. There's no need to do a full classroom makeover unless that's something you really love. I celebrated talk like a pirate day by having my students greet each other like pirates during morning meeting. It was just a fun little surprise and a few moments to be silly together.

Nationaldaycalendar.com, lists all the upcoming theme days. There's Star Trek day on September 8, you could teach your kids how to do the Vulcan greeting, live long and prosper.

September 16 is play dough day. You could bring in play dough for a few minutes of fun, or you could change up a lesson and have the kids use play dough to model a math problem or even sculpt an idiom.

We recommend you avoid celebrating beer lovers day on September 7.

Yeah, I think that's maybe more of an after school activity.

All right, we've changed something, added something, and celebrated something. Now it's time to surprise and delight by choosing something.

Choise is incredibly motivating for students, so let's talk about some easy ways to surprise students by offering them a choice.

I think the easiest way to give students a choice is to let them choose where to do their work. I don't mean flexible seating. Flexible seating is a great way to let students make decisions that support their needs. But flexible seating doesn't count as surprise and delight, because it's part of the daily classroom culture.

With this kind of seating choice we're talking more like you can decide if you want to work on your assignment at your desk or under your desk, but you have to be working under there. If you can't handle that choice, then I will have to make the choice for you to sit back in your seat.

You can also give students a choice by letting them vote. Offer two options for a re allowed and let the students pick. Or if you've got a minute before walking to the computer lab, let the kids vote on whether to go the long way there or the short way there.

The key to giving students choice is to make sure that as the teacher, you can live with whatever option they decide. It's better to tell your students that they can choose three problems to skip on their math paper than letting them choose whether or not to do their math paper at all.

Although most kids would probably find that both surprising and delightful.

We are out to our fifth and final avenue of surprise and delight solve something. There are great ways to incorporate problem solving all year long, but it is especially useful at the start of the school year, because it's a fun and powerful way to teach kids how to function in your class and how to work together.

We love the pigeon books and a fun extension of The Pigeon Has to Go to School would be having kids work together to design a mode of transportation for the pigeon using pipe cleaners and Lego wheels. Or maybe they have to use popsicle sticks and tape to design a crayon box, and you can have a competition to see which groups box holds the most crayons.

Another regular back to school activity is getting to know the teacher. Instead of sharing details about you, make your students earn the information by solving for it. Use math problems to answer questions like how old you are, maybe, if you want to give that one away, how many pets you own, how many kids you have, your shoe size, your birthday and so on. You could make the problem simple for younger students and more challenging for your older kids.

A fun way to extend this is to have kids write math problems to introduce themselves. Then everyone is not only learning about each other, but practicing a little extra math to go with it.

Surprise and delight is a powerful tool in the classroom, and it really can be as simple as moving everybody to an unexpected corner of the room for a read aloud. A little change can feel like a treat.

But the key to using surprise and delight successfully is making it intentional. Being intentional might sound like the opposite of being surprising, but things get too crazy in the classroom, this will quickly become one more thing that's lost in the shuffle.

One solution might be to write a note to yourself to include surprise and delight somewhere in your plans each week.

And to help your memory, maybe make a list of the five avenues to refer to: change something, add something, celebrate something, choose something and solve something.

Surprise and delight is an easy way to elevate your classroom, and the benefits of improved teacher student relationships will last the whole year.

We'd love to hear how you incorporate surprise and delight. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Now let's talk about this week's teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small, actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week's teacher approved tip is eat the small half of your sandwich first. Can you explain this, Heidi?

I can, but I can't take credit for it. This tip comes from the Happier Ladies podcast in Episode 37 they give suggestions for ways to romanticize your lunch. And that whole episode is great, and you might want to check it out now that we are back into the swing of packing a lunch every day.

But one of the tips that they shared, and I loved it so much, was to eat the smaller half of your sandwich first. And Malika had to explain what this meant. She said that she noticed a friend brought a sandwich to lunch every day, and every day this friend's sandwiches were cut into two very unequal pieces. Malika finally asked what was going on, and the friend explained that one day she accidentally cut her sandwich in half unequally.

When she ate the small side of her sandwich, she looked down and she still had so much sandwich left, it felt like getting a little treat. So every day, she cuts her sandwich in two unequal pieces and eats the smaller side first. It's simple and it's silly, but what a fun little hack.

This probably wouldn't work as well for salad, no, but if you're eating leftovers or a wrap or even a protein bar, you could try splitting it in two and eating the smaller side first, and boosting your mood a little in the process.

And who doesn't need a mood boost in the middle of the day? Just don't use this as a fraction lesson.

To wrap up the show, we are sharing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

I'm giving extra credit to the Afmat, electric pencil sharpener. So we talked about this a couple weeks ago, and I said that I needed to give it a try. So of course, I was like, Well, I gotta order it now. And guess what? We love it. It works so well, and it's adorable.

I like that it automatically feeds the pencil in and out, and it charges. You can use it on plug too now, every pencil in our house is extremely sharp, and my kids are just waiting for one to dull so they can sharpen it again. In fact, they were breaking pencils so that they could sharpen them again, because it was so much fun. So I do highly recommend if you're in the market for a good and also very cute pencil sharpener.

Well, that's good to know. Usually that cute stuff is just garbage.

So that's why I wrote it off, I've been seeing it for ages, and it wasn't until the teachers were saying it's actually good that I was like, Oh, well, maybe I should try it. I trust the teachers.

Yes. Well, that's a good solution to a big headache.

What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

Well this is much less exciting. Well, maybe, I guess, it depends. My extra Ccredit goes to fresh garden tomatoes. We are in peak tomato season, and our dad loves to grow lots of varieties of them. There's just nothing better, nothing tastes more summery than a fresh garden tomato. That just I love, that blend of tartan, sweet, the little salt and pepper. It's like eating a five star meal. So August tomatoes are where it is at. I'm gonna be sad when we're done with them.

Yes, the only thing we'll be sad about being gone in August.

That's it for today's episode. Remember to plan a little surprise and delight to help strengthen your teacher student relationships. And don't forget this week's teacher approved tip to eat the smaller side of your sandwich first.

If you enjoyed this episode, we would love if you shared it with a teacher friend who might enjoy it as well. It's the best way to help our show reach new listeners.