Third period, some pics

It felt like magic, but it was just framing.

Aug 26, 2024

10:50 am, Thursday, August 22nd

Class 3/1, English for Communication, Sunflower Trilingual School, Samut Sakhon, Thailand

As the students were finishing up their coloring activity, I told them that they needed to sit down and clear their desks. With this being a classroom full of hyper 3rd graders, inevitably not everyone did this. It normally takes several rounds of commands and valuable minutes to transition to a new activity. However, since we were about to play Simon Says and there was not much time left in class, we didn’t have time to waste.

I knew that I could raise my voice and tell them again, which would probably work, but I had an idea to try something I had never done before.

At the front of the class, I said in my teacher’s voice “Simon says sit down.” What happened next has been on my mind ever since and is what prompted this post.

As soon as I said that, panic was the first thing I noticed on some of their faces as they sprinted to their seats and within five seconds, every student was sitting at attention. Then I said “Simon says clear your desks” and like they were hypnotized, I saw lots of tiny arms moving very fast and within five seconds every desk was spotless. Then, “Simon says stop talking” and within two seconds you could hear a pin drop.

As I stood at the front of the class, I couldn’t help but smile and laugh to myself.

I was in awe at how well that worked.

Over the past year, I have been in more classes than I can remember that have felt like battles over trying to get all of the students to follow instructions. And then just like that, by framing following instructions as a game, I achieved my goal in the fastest, smoothest, and most fun way I have ever done.

It felt like magic, but it was just framing.

As a result of this eureka moment, I have been thinking about framing more broadly - what are the other paths in my life that I can change that would improve my life.

Now yes, it might sound obvious that there are different ways to do things and some of those ways are better than others. But in reality, I don’t believe that people think of those other options as frequently as it might benefit them, if they ever think of them at all.

Throughout life, we tend to get entrenched in our daily routines and end up repeating certain paths over and over. After doing something the same way a thousand times, it is hard to think that there are other ways to do that thing.

This happens at home, at work, at the gym, everywhere. Sometimes this is great because refining something over years can lead to massive increases in skill and efficiency.

However, most of the time these routines just happen to be the paths that we are currently on and not necessarily the optimal ones. They probably get the job done but are by no means guaranteed to be the best.

Thus, it is up to us to be intentional about spotting the paths that we are on, particularly the ones that are causing friction, and looking for different options.

This Simon Says moment was an excellent reminder that there are always much, much better paths out there. We just have to find them.