One of the primary motivators for beginning this reflection blog was an amazing end-of-year experience with my AP Psychology students this year. It turned out to be quite moving, emotionally. To be honest, my eyes glassed over, and my voice began to crack as I brought the class activity to a close.

But now, two weeks later, as I sit here to write about it, the emotion seems to have paled; the gut-wrenching experience of that last class has faded in my memory.

First, let’s look at the class activity itself.

Last year, Yosup, the other psychology teacher, and I had students give TED-esque talks, telling/ informing/ educating us about something that they knew well and enjoyed. Students, as in a TED talk, had to create slides to support their presentation — and that’s what the activity really was: a 5-minute presentation. It also took several class days for students to prepare, and for us to explain the assignment, set the parameters, and even review principles of good visual presentation.

This year, we simply didn’t have the time for all of that. Instead, we came up with something that we called a 2x4x6 Talk. Students spoke for no more than 2-minutes, and could use a 4x6 card, if needed. Their prompt for this two-minute talk was simple: “I love …” (Here is the handout that we gave students.)

We had one 80-minute class period to hear all of the student talks. One interesting piece of the activity was how we managed the transition between speakers and affirmation. Each student was privately told who would speak after them; they had to not only prepare their own talk, but also prepare an introduction for the person who would follow. Here, by way of example, was my introduction for the next speaker:

This was one of the best features of the activity. Students never mentally checked-out of someone’s talk because they were worried about their own talk (the next-in-line phenomenon); the introductions were all personal, interested, clever — and many were genuinely sweet. There was also a certain sense of mystery because the students all ended the introduction with the next speaker’s name.

The 2x4x6 Talks were shorter and less prepared than last year’s — and that made them somehow more authentic. Some students really opened up, speaking about very personal things in their life; not all of them were “happy” topics either. Some students shared realizations about themselves that they’d recently made. Other students just talked about hobbies. I was the last speaker, and I ended by talking about why I love teaching. That’s when I started choking up. It isn’t something that I often talk about, at least not seriously — and it choked me up, and students as well.

Moving on, I want to address the issue of timely reflections.


It was such a moving experience, hearing what students Love in their lives, and then even talking about something that I love, that I wanted to write that experience down — hence this blog. But now, as I sit here two weeks later, the emotions just aren’t as palpable. I feel myself writing in a more clinical manner than I would have, had I written this post two weeks ago.

Lesson learned: write my reflections sooner rather than later.