The class before the class (or, how to create a magical portal)

Since 2015 I’ve been a practitioner of The Class, a movement method that blends several different modalities and feels like a cross between Jane Fonda aerobics and an exorcism.

One day I was stretching on my mat before class at the NYC studio and chatting with my neighbor. When she learned I lived in the Bronx, she marveled at my commute, up to an hour each way for a 1-hour class.

“I don’t mind it,” I replied. “It’s the class before The Class.”

That hour I spent on the subway to The Class was my time to prepare for what I was about to do. Anyone who has taken The Class, whether they love it as much as me or not, will probably agree: it’s like entering another world, an experience of somatic freedom and release that is transformative and merits preparation. An hour on the subway was that time for me. I read, listened to music, slipped into daydreams, stared off into space, hydrated, rested, breathed, and connected.

How we enter a space matters. When we are harried or haphazard in our transitions to important gatherings—be they exercise, 7th grade ELA, or a PD workshop–we miss an opportunity to open ourselves to all the possibilities awaiting us. And grand, magical, enthralling possibilities await us in any learning experience, no matter how mundane or mandatory they might technically be.

I wrote about this in the book I co-authored about educator burnout (I was speaking about student classrooms, but all of this is true for meetings, trainings, and workshops where adult educators gather too):

What if we treated time in class with our students like the precious moment in time it is, an hour or less when a group of people come together to be transformed, a period of time that will never come again? As Tom Wayman writes in one of my favorite poems about teaching and learning, “Did I Miss Anything?”:

Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human existence

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

A question I love to ask teachers I’m coaching is, “How will students be different at the end of this lesson than they were when they walked in the door?” Students come to class to learn, and learning is a transformative process. So, what transformation will students experience as a result of their time in class today? When we don’t think of our classrooms as transformational spaces, much of what happens there can feel stiflingly transactional. So, what if instead we thought about classrooms as places where great change happens every single day, assemblages of humans brought together to question and explore and dream, where on any given Thursday at 10:06 in the morning, a young person will suddenly see something in a new way that will change the course of their life?

When we think of our classrooms, meetings, and trainings this way, lesson plans and agendas become treasure maps and doors become portals to wonderlands. And those are transformative experiences worth preparing for.

• How will your student or adult learners be transformed by their time with you this coming school year?
• How might you create a portal to the wonderland of your classroom, meeting, or workshop this fall?
• What is the class before YOUR class?

Adapted from the July 30, 2024, edition of my Substack newsletter, The Cocoon