So one of the teachers at my school frequently presents at a local ‘open mic night’ at a rooftop cafe here in San Diego. I’ve been lucky enough to attend a couple of times, and it’s always a really inspirational experience. It’s always amazing to see how much talent there is in the community. There’s stand-up comedians, singers, musicians, and an assortment of other eclectic talents. I really like how much diversity there is to the acts.

After attending this open mic night for the first time, I actually tried to do a semblance of an open-mic night in my class this year as a way for the students to showcase their various talents. For all their flaws and insecurities, middle schoolers can be shockingly good at different things. More though, since they’re so young, I felt like an open-mic night experience could be really important towards motivating them to work on an art form that they might carry with them into the future. I framed it as “The Thirty Day Challenge”.

I led with a discussion about how just doing a little bit of work each day can create a really meaningful amount of growth or productivity; it’s just about the habit of improving / practicing with consistency. This tied in nicely with our classroom’s focus on a ‘growth mindset’, and I appreciated the balance that this project found between choice & direction.

All of the students needed to present or share something at our “Thirty Day Challenge Presentations” (which the students soon began to call the talent show), but I left it fairly open as to what it could be. Students could work on an existing talent or skill, or (and I encouraged this choice the most) pick a new ability that they wanted to work on.

Next, I set up a loose timeline: within a week, they’d need an approved project to be working on as well as a plan for when/how much they would practice each day. In the weeks that followed, we had periodic reflections; some of the reflections were written, but we also made time to share about our progress in our community circle a couple of times.

For my part, I bought a nice microphone for us to use in class, and I personally worked on developing my skills on a Ukulele that the music instructor had taught my class to use in a previous quarter. I think that students really pick up on the passion and vulnerability that I sometimes am able to share with them. If I’m being honest, this probably does more work towards motivating them than a lot of the other strategies I use.

There was some push back. Naturally. They’re middle schoolers. Middle schoolers whine. But really, there was only a little bit of push back. A few kids procrastinated in deciding on what talent to focus on. I actually made a conscious decision to basically reject no ideas as long as they weren’t made in bad faith (which was basically just this one kid who said he wanted to ‘track his sleep schedule for 30 days’).

While I wanted students to do something they were passionate about, but I’d settle for them doing something they simply tolerated (even if I suspected it was just because it was fairly easy). My long term plan was to do this at least twice throughout the year. I figured after the first round of presentations, students would understand how powerful it felt to present something they’d worked on in front of the class, and ideally the level of quality of presentations would improve the second time around.

The Results?

It was beautiful. There’s moments as a teacher when you know it won’t be quantifiable in a test, but that you’re positive that it was an important part of your students’ growth and overall school experience.

Basically, it was everything I’d dreamed it might be: music, talent, art, and passion. Several of my students played musical instruments (many of whom I’d had no prior knowledge of these outside-of-class-abilities) One student presented a whole hip-hop routine. Some students sang duets. One of my shyest student shared a video of her anime drawings while singing a cover of “Rather Be” (two talents at once!). My favorite of the unusual talents was a girl who showed the architecture of a virtual house she’d designed in the Sims. This demonstrated both impressive video-editing skills, but a good sense of home-decorating style.

This presentation hit so many of the targets that I’d hoped.

• I was able to learn more about students passions & talents.
• Students were empowered to show their skills in class.
• We built a stronger classroom community through the vulnerability and shared respect during presentations.
• Students were motivated to do productive work outside of class.
• Different talents, interests, and abilities were honored.

Hopefully this post inspires a few other teachers to try this out in class. It really takes very little ‘class time’ (other than the presentation day), since most of the practice for their presentations takes place outside of class. I felt like it was a ton of fun, and the kids all really enjoyed it (some of them only in retrospect, but that’s just how middle schoolers are). If nothing else, I’m definitely committed to doing it again next year. Is it crazy to want to do it once a quarter? Maybe even once a month? … I guess I’ll just have to read the room with next year’s kids.