The Life-Changing Magic of Sparking Joy in the Classroom: The Art of KonMariing Our Courses

9/5/2021

by Heather M. F. Lyke

— The original version of this piece was first published in April 2019 by RPS Secondary Curriculum & Instruction --

If you know me, you know my husband and I recently purchased a new home. Wanting to downsize (I wanted a tiny house, he wanted no yard, so we compromised on buying and renovating a 1970’s condo), we slowly filtered through our belongings. We pulled items out of closets that we forgot we even had: placing in boxes the linens not used in years, the sweaters we no longer wore, and the camping gear we were not even sure why we purchased in the first place.

Perhaps the hardest part of downsizing was that we sometimes run into those items we needed to get rid of but struggled to part with. Those items that served a purpose in their time but were no longer of use. Items like:

The quilt I once bought on sale at Carson Pirie Scott—the one that covered my bed in the home I purchased when I was 24 but has become ratted and faded over the years.
The Lego sets my husband used to play with growing up—the ones his parents gave us when they were cleaning out their closets that suddenly sat stacked in ours.
The extra wedding invitations we ordered because ordering in bulk was cheaper, but once in our home they simply sat on a shelf.

These items—these were the ones that were hard to donate or toss. These items played an important role once and therefore were emblazoned in our memories and dear to our hearts.

Again, if you know me, you also know I love a good extended metaphor. As I see it, downsizing our course content is much like downsizing a home. As we shift into a new school year, we often find ourselves making adjustments for the school year to come. Particularly with over a year of Covid under our belts, we have had 18+ months of needing to trim content to simply survive in a world of constant shift: online instruction, hybrid structures, and long period of quarantining highlighting how even in education less is indeed more.

In our classrooms, just as in our homes, there are always items that are easy to donate or toss:

extra paper handouts
past seating charts
meeting notes about things that have since occurred

However, also like with our homes, there are items that are hard to part with, although maybe we should:

that lesson on ___ that didn’t quite work out as planned
that article I thought was great but that students didn’t quite get into
that teaching strategy that just doesn’t seem to keep students engaged anymore

In 2019, to get inspired to downsize our home, my husband and I (along with much of the US), found ourselves watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondō on Netflix. Now, in the fall of 2021, a reminder of all the downsizing we did has resurfaced in the form of Kondō’s newest Netflix show, Sparking Joy with Marie Kondō. Having read her first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, when it was first released, both Netflix series have served as a reminder to me of many of Marie Kondō’s key ideas (which are also reinforced by her newest book, Joy at Work). Ideas that, of course, work great in homes, but that also can be used to help create even more magic in our classrooms.

Images of Marie Kondo's books and series

7 Steps for Applying the KonMari Method to Our Classrooms:

Getting Started...

| 1 |
Commit to tidying up all at once.

Marie Kondō shares that the KonMari Method is most effective when you do all the tidying in one fell swoop. Kondō puts it this way:

"From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change. That’s why the task of putting your house in order should be done quickly. It allows you to confront the issues that are really important. Tidying is just a tool, not the final destination. The true goal should be to establish the lifestyle you want most once your house has been put in order."

With this in mind, when you decide it’s time to start tidying up your course content, consider doing it in one fell swoop. Rather than doing what I used to do, which was to set aside a day every week or so during the summer to restructure and revamp; try instead setting as aside a few evenings in a row, a weekend, or even a full week to really dig-in to the task. Just as with a home, perhaps this will help you reset your instruction, allow you to confront the most important pieces, and establish the course structure you and your students need most.

| 2 |
Imagine the ideal to prevent relapse.

Ask yourself: What is the purpose of tidying up my instruction?

Is there a certain skill your students consistently struggle with and you need more time to fortify that skillset?

Is there a certain group of students you struggle to connect with and want to add some material that might better engage them?
Are there new strategies that you’ve learned and want to try, but are not sure where they best fit?

Keeping the answers to questions like these at the forefront will help you stay on track, should the tiding ever get overwhelming. (And, if you’re anything like me, it will.)

Discarding...

| 3 |
Ask yourself questions for each item.

Marie Kondō suggests a few simple questions, moving from a rational to a more emotional approach.

When working with home items, she suggests:

What is the purpose of this object?
Has it fulfilled its purpose already?
Why did I get this thing?
When did I get it?
How did it land in my house?

Since these questions don’t really work with instruction; instead, we might ask ourselves questions such as:

What was the purpose of this activity/resource/lesson/text/etc.?
Does it still fulfill this purpose?
Why did I start using this activity/resource/lesson/text/etc.?
When did I start using it?
Why has it remained in my lesson plans?

| 4 |
Sparking joy.

One element Marie Kondō is most famous for is the concept of discarding items that no longer ‘spark joy.’ (In fact, her second book is even titled Spark Joy.) Marie Kondō recommends holding each item with both hands and asking yourself: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If it doesn’t, thank it for the purpose it once served and then set it aside to discard.

When it comes to course content and instructional practices, obviously this looks a bit different. We can’t easily hold up a worksheet we now only store electronically to see if it sparks joy, but we can open the file, look it over top to bottom, recall how it went over the last time it was used with students, and then ask ourselves:

Does this still spark joy in my classroom?
Am I still passionate when I teach ___ the way I’ve been teaching it?
When I use/do ___, is joy sparked in my students?

If the answer to these questions is ‘yes,’ then keep it around: teach the lesson again, use that text next year, and/or continue to utilize that strategy.

However, if doesn’t spark joy, set it aside. Consider making three piles or lists for those items that no longer spark joy in you and your students:

Must keep, but need to revamp. This pile/list is for items that are critical to student learning: items that align tightly with power standards, essential learning outcomes, or prioritized learnings which help scaffold instruction for struggling learners, or that are specifically noted as a curricular requirement. However, despite them being critical, they are not sparking joy—so they need a makeover.
Donate. This pile/list is for items that no longer work with your course or student population, but that would still spark joy if used in a different course or with a different group of students. Maybe it’s a strategy you used to use with 9th graders that now would better fit 8th graders. Maybe it’s a book that used to work in the Contemporary Novels course, but due to its publication date may now fit better in American Literature. Share these gems with your colleagues!
Discard completely. This pile/list is self-explanatory, although it certainly can be challenging to let go of items we once used as a reliable activity/resource/lesson/text...

This, at least for me, is the hardest part of tidying up. It may help to keep in mind what Marie Kondō notes in her first book:

“when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”

| 5 |
Finish discarding before moving on.

Marie Kondō notes that neat does not equal decluttered. It can be tempting to simply reorganize our material and call it good. But I can take all my pants from my closet, fold them into perfect KonMari rectangles, and move them to my set of drawers—but it won’t change the fact that they don’t fit right or that I never wear them anymore. For that reason, I have to purge items before I fold and rearrange. Only then, once I see what remains, do I really know where the best place is to store my pants. Only then, do I see if I have any gaps in my wardrobe.

Likewise, in our classrooms, we have to get rid of—or least commit to revamping—those items that no longer fit our students. Only then, once we see what remains, do we know what new format or structure might work best for the year to come. Only then, do we see if we have any gaps in our instruction.

| 6 |
Organize by category.

Marie Kondō always notes to organize by category, not by room. Classroom translation: organize by power standards/essential learning outcomes/prioritized learnings, not by instructional units or lessons. This helps ensure balance and eliminate holes.

Placing...

| 7 |
Designate a spot for everything.

Everything that is left, should fill a need. **Whew!** Finally, the time comes to reorganize.

This step reminds me of what I did over decade ago when I revamped the American Literature course I was teaching. After having purged a few novels and some grammar units that were no longer sparking joy in my students, I rearranged. Because I figuratively laid everything out on the table, I was able to then see that my remaining content, texts, lessons, etc. fit into six themes. Embracing that fact, I rearranged from teaching American Literature chronologically, as I had always done in the past, to teaching it thematically. But it also meant I had some holes to fill: I was suddenly able to weave in a new book group unit and adjust how I taught grammar by embedding it into our reading and writing tasks. It was a lot of work, but, ultimately, it led to more effective learning in the years that followed.

As my husband and I experienced firsthand with our home, the act of downsizing can feel overwhelming while in the process of discarding. However, we have moved into our new home and have placed all our remaining items back in the best order.

As Marie Kondō states:

“the space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming...not for the person we were in the past.”

This is true for our classrooms, too: we need to make them a place where students can grow into who they will become in this ever-changing world...not for the students we taught in the past.

Heather M. F. Lyke is the Director of Teaching & Learning for Dover-Eyota Schools and author of numerous articles focusing on quality education.