Threshold Conversations
On the Quiet Power of Not Quite Committing
Prequel: Even I am annoyed at myself that I’m going to reference Teach Like a Champion, so you’re welcome to have an opinion on that as well. There is a lot in that book that I don’t like for demonstrable reasons (focus on compliance rather than comprehension, overly rigid policies called “rigorous” instead) and also an intuitive unease that I can’t quite put my finger on.
One technique in Teach Like a Champion, a cornerstone text about instruction and school turnaround is called “Threshold.” Threshold is basically what it sounds like - standing in the threshold of your classroom, greeting each student as they walk in and being able to keep an eye on the classroom and the hallway during transitions at the same time. Even this is one of the things that makes me recoil a little bit - yes, it’s relationship-building, making sure each student gets a warm word at the beginning of the day, but it’s also about power and control. I do appreciate at least a nod to the fact that this practice isn’t quite enough in terms of supporting students from Doug Lemov’s own website (though, again, I don’t love that I’m citing it, either).
The threshold conversations that I’ve been noticing recently are conversations that happen between adults in thresholds - standing by someone’s car in a parking lot; standing in a door to a classroom or office, with one person on either side; standing in a middle, neutral space like a hallway or library or cafeteria. The standing is important - these conversations aren’t the kind you settle in for. They’re rarely planned and only sometimes comfortable. But some of the most key work that I’ve done, both personal and professional, has happened in this exact way.
Some of my favorite threshold conversations happened in college; I remember standing in the parking lot outside the building where I spent most of my time on multiple occasions, with multiple people. These conversations ranged from mundane rehashing of social dynamics to profound discussions of what came Next, in the world beyond the academy. The thing about these conversations is that I remember them happening with everyone - one week, someone would be rolling their eyes about me still being in the parking lot at midnight, and the next weekend, they’d be with me, talking outside their car. Those initial conversations developed stronger connective tissue for my more tentative friendships and cemented my heart connections with others, one deep dive at a time. My senior year roommate and I also perfected the art of the threshold conversation - but from our facing bedrooms, when we really should have been asleep hours ago. We would both stand (in a zillion layers because our heat didn’t really work) in our doorways, circling the simultaneous expansive hope and deep dread that came from that unknown Next.
Threshold conversations are the Way of public education, by necessity. There’s rarely time to actually schedule a meeting, or the middle of the Venn Diagram between your schedule and theirs is nonexistent, so I would say 75% of my work with other adults is done in in-between spaces like hallways.
“Hey, where are we on that email I sent?” “Did you get a chance to check in with so-and-so? She might need a little extra TLC today.” “What time is the fire drill?” Most of the time, there’s little profound about them, and much to be frustrated about; these snippets of conversation are just the way that things get done in 4-minute passing periods and lunches that immediately start to dwindle from their allotted 30 minutes.
In teaching this year I’ve gotten to experience the longer-term outcomes of natural links of threshold conversations and see these brief bursts of necessity grow toward more of what I remember from college. One of my favorite threshold conversations from the year after the pandemic happened just as the crowds were beginning to disperse after afternoon dismissal. At the time, I taught mostly 7th grade with two random (but deeply loved) sections of 8th grade, and I never saw the 8th grade teachers, barely knowing them due to being new, a year of online school, and sprawling California-style school geography. I tentatively approached this group, all people 1.) I was sure were cooler than me (still true, but matters less) and 2.) who I had a feeling were as enamored with our current 8th grade class as I was. I eased myself into the conversation gently, mostly listening, but starting to both pick up and share small but important pieces of information - who had gotten into their desired high school, who had broken up, who hadn’t been at school in a while and needed a check in. We were there a little longer than was reasonable for a hallway conversation, probably half an hour after school, and I wouldn’t say that anything said was deeply transformative in the moment.
However, I can trace that one threshold conversation, and the many that followed it, to three of my closest collegial and personal teacher relationships, friendships without which this line of work is not possible (for me).
At that moment, I wasn’t ready to talk to these people about cross-curricular planning or ask for a partner in supporting first year teachers or even ask them to coffee. I wasn’t even really having coffee out in public yet because #pandemic. This is why, I’m realizing, threshold conversations are important - they pave the way for bigger asks, for grander plans, for enough familiarity that an invitation doesn’t feel forced or strange or out of the blue. And sure enough…several months later, on the last day of school, this group was part of an epic end-of-year celebration that truly cracked open the network that I consider my campus ride-or-dies, the close-knit group who made it worth coming back even after such a difficult year last year.
Threshold conversations can be a beginning, but they can also be a continuation. Just like my some tentative conversations in college that helped me move from frenemy to friend and acquaintance to colleague, this year has brought threshold conversations that bridge strong professional relationships with the personal. This is not a post about boundaries, and I’m not a great person to talk about those, since I don’t have great ones, especially with work. Certainly, there’s an argument to be made that strong boundaries between the professional and the personal are needed to maintain a manageable working environment in a capitalist system. More and more, however, I find myself arguing that personal relationships in challenging work contexts (like all public schools, no matter how strong or sparkly) are sustaining and simply necessary to continue.
In a recent threshold situation, someone who I know well professionally but not personally and I were leaving a meeting at the same time. I had a question about something work-related, and that thing led to other work things, which led to belief-laden things that led to off-campus things. The whole conversation took place while I was holding a door open (a heavy door that would have closed if I stepped six inches one way or the other), and it was long enough that I decided not to go to yoga to let the conversation play out. The meeting could have just ended and we could have gone our separate ways. It also could have ended when I opened the door and let it close behind me. But something kept us there, some pull toward solutions or connections or just a further joint venture into the darkness of Not Being Sure. A lot of what we talked about wasn’t concrete; it wasn’t the “Threshold” of Teach Like a Champion, but more the prickly frustration when something systemic has unintended human consequences, or the true but hard-to-quantify subtlety of a winding conversation as we pulled together a lot of related threads but didn’t necessarily land on an answer.
On the other side of things, at any point, we could have moved through the door and sat down in chairs or scheduled a meeting to talk about the stuff we were talking about more formally the next day. But we weren’t quite ready for that - committing to a meeting about a nebulous topic is challenging when there’s no time for meetings about concrete topics, and moving the outside-of-work stuff to an outside-of-work setting isn’t where things were for a variety of reasons. But in that moment, as in so many others before and even since, I can feel the importance of following that spark that, even if it doesn’t draw us further just yet, keeps us in the threshold, curious enough to stay engaged for just a little bit longer.
The committing-but-not keeps us safe, slowly building the bridge that will allow us to go further or deeper, just later.
I started my career in a line of work where you didn’t have time for not committing - you had six weeks on a contract, and if you didn’t make friends within the first 72 hours, you were lonely for that time. You had to pick a person, pick a topic, pick a place, and make a plan. This made for lots of interesting pairings and fun adventures and fiery arguments, but it also left too much room for letting in the wrong energy and not enough time for looking for (and heeding) red flags.
As someone who comes off pretty intense off the bat, I’m much more of a “slow burn;” my kids don’t tend to like me much until around this time of year; this is one reason why I have more success when I loop up, like with my aforementioned 8th grade class. My slow burn qualities, especially as I tried to apply them to the fast-and-furious friend making of the regional theatre circuit, didn’t always work out so well. That is a not insignificant reason why I shifted industries. Being in the same place for a while (or having the choice to be, anyway) allows for space, for tentative steps forward that allow for a deeper plunge, a moving beyond the threshold to planned, “real” conversations - in cars, at coffee shops, in conference rooms.
I’ll never stop being grateful to have the skills from needing to make immediate connections; it’s what saves me every August as a classroom teacher and what makes me able to get people to do things in professional development, even when they really don’t want to. But my gratitude for the ability and the space to take things at threshold conversation pace is there in equal measure.
I’d love to hear about your pace (preferred or required) of making connections, any recent threshold conversations that you’d like to share, and anything else these ideas spark for you.
I’m excited to be offering a spring equinox workshop this Sunday, March 17th, from 9:00-10:30am. We’ll explore sun salutations, moon salutations, and poses and meditation designed to draw on the energy and possibilities of spring. You might like to have a journal and a plant nearby.
