Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering, a book that, as the subtitle suggests, takes up the subject of how we meet and why it matters, provides key insights into at least three crucial aspects of excellent teaching: establishing purpose, cultivating generous authority, and ending well. Parker’s book’s written for a general reader; anyone who has or might some day plan a birthday party would find it useful. But I’ll argue here that teachers striving for excellence would seriously benefit from viewing what they do through the “gathering” lens.

Parker is not herself a teacher. She’s a moderator and event guru whose work includes helping groups create sustained dialogue about difficult topics. What initially caught my attention was a story she told in an interview about facilitating the launch of a group founded to discuss and improve race relations on her university campus.

On a spotlit stage in an otherwise darkened auditorium, she and her co-facilitators began with a “cold opening,” by each stepping forward in turn and reciting a quotation that people of the same race say to each other but never out loud in mixed company. For example, “Why do white students’ parties continue until 3am while black students’ parties get broken up much earlier?” The quotations surfaced the tensions that the group wanted to navigate, and the dramatic opening powerfully seized the attention of participants and announced, through performance, that this dialogue would face head-on the challenges the university faced.

When I heard her tell that story, and pictured the scene as she described it, I was immediately struck that the vibe in that auditorium is similar to the vibe great teachers create–a combination of inspiration, edginess, community, and purpose–and after I read the book, sure enough, many of the gathering practices she describes are those of great teachers.

Teachers, it’s true, don’t create a guest list, the way a gathering’s host might. The students in class are not invited, they just show up–and sometimes against their will. But Parker’s book lights a path for inviting all of the physically present students into a gathering, where they do meaningful work and learning together.

Establish an Inspiring, Vivid, and Shared Sense of Purpose

In chapter one, “Decide Why You’re Really Gathering,” Parker sets out to disrupt a somnambulant approach to get-togethers. She writes:

Most purposes for gatherings feel worthy and respectable but are also basic and bland: “We’re hosting a welcome dinner so that our new colleague feels comfortable in our tight-knit group,” or “I’m throwing a birthday party to look back on the year.” These are purposes, but they fail at the test for a meaningful reason for coming together: Does it stick its neck out a little bit? Does it take a stand? Is it willing to unsettle some of the guests (or maybe the host)? Does it refuse to be everything to everyone?

Parker would nudge the “welcome dinner” host to establish a more specific purpose: the new co-worker should end the meal with a firm sense of each new colleague’s professional strengths, as well as knowing the two books they would take to a desert island.

The teaching analogue here, at the level of day-to-day classroom teaching, is a learning outcome, which provides a nominal purpose for the coming together of that set of students and that teacher on that specific day. 

Teachers who consider a class session a “gathering” will need to re-word learning outcomes so they become specific, inspirational, and shared, instead of “basic and bland,” like Parker’s example purpose statements above. Done effectively, powerful purpose setting activates students and helps them understand the importance of their own role in the shared work.

Teachers can do this in many ways. I’ve seen a teacher, charged with helping students understand the causes of WWI, begin class by saying essentially the following:

Today, we’re going to figure out why the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand led to the catastrophe of WWI, and I’m glad you’re all here because you’ll need to share some of your own experiences of living here in Chicago in order for us to figure this out, because did you know that Sarajevo in 1914 was similar in lots of ways to Chicago right now? But first, in order to do this, we need to define who Archduke Ferdinand was and what Sarajevo is, and when we’re all confident we know those, we’ll dig in. Ready to go?

In this example, the learning purpose is specific enough (how are the assassination and WWI connected?), and this preamble also makes clear why every student’s participation is crucial to achieve the class’s shared purpose. Additionally, by isolating the key terms that will be necessary to define right away, the teacher is beginning the process of inviting students into a shared sense of purpose, instead of just declaring it. After defining those terms, many students will be able to explain the purpose in their own words, and thereby will become co-custodians of it.

Another teacher I observed, in a science class, established purpose as follows:

Folks, what I have never really understood is why it took scientists until 1937 to unlock the mystery of the citric acid cycle, which is an absolutely necessary process for all aerobic life on earth. None of us would be here today without this amazing set of chemical reactions working perfectly. Today, each of my table groups has a diagram of one phase of that process and in the next ten minutes your group will become an expert in that phase. Then we’ll need to work together because we’ll mix up our table groups so everyone can get a full picture of the the cycle, and only then will we be able to get to the bottom of this mystery of why it took hundreds of years to piece this all together.

After this short declamation, which took maybe 60 seconds, the teacher asked students think-pair-share and put the purpose into their own words, a move that helps students take on ownership of their learning.

As with the example above, the learning is specifically identified, but the class design in this case follows an arc like a story, making it feel more inviting and, well, purposeful. Telling students that class will end when the bell rings is much less inviting than telling them it will end when they’ve solved the mystery. Additionally, the participants are asked to understand that all their individual and small-group work will contribute to the larger group’s success. Finally, the purpose as stated implies that the learning addresses a challenge in the actual world: how might scientists make swifter progress?

Perhaps the teacher openings above strike you as a bit artificial, or maybe their jaunty, semi-Mr.-Rogers-y-ness even gives you a cringe shiver. It’s true that all teachers must modify practices to suit their specific milieu and personality. But I can say that the students in these classes were more engaged than in those where a teacher mechanically reads a learning outcome as written, naively believing that thereby the purpose of the gathering has been established.

Why is Establishing a Purpose So Helpful?

The purpose guides the activities of the gathering. As Parker puts it, “Every gathering with a vivid, particular purpose needs more of certain behaviors and less of others.” In both classrooms scenarios described above, it’s clear that all participants will be expected to conduct research, weigh evidence, share ideas and experiences, and debate and clarify conclusions. Recreational computer use, jumping rope, and math homework, to name just a few examples, clearly do not connect to the vivid purpose named in either class. Of course, these behaviors may occur, but the established purpose serves as the anchor to which the teacher can refer when redirecting students.

Finally, in thinking beyond the day-to-day, teachers who help students feel an authentic sense of purpose for their work have the opportunity to enjoy the true power of the gathering framework.

Examples of powerful purposes for gathering sets of students together for semester or year-long projects include the following:

• Our purpose is to act courageously on our answer to this question: what can we do to dramatically reduce gun violence in the United States? 
• We will give voice to the homeless by interviewing individuals and sharing their stories in a professional-quality magazine that we design, market, and distribute throughout the city.
• We will bring attention to the refugee crisis by creating an immersive simulation and helping over two hundred visitors better understand the challenges this population faces.

In each case, the purpose is vivid and specific, it makes clear why a gathering is necessary (none of those projects can be accomplished alone), and it includes an authentic connection to larger needs in the world.

So, to end where we started, if a gathering is necessary for doing truly meaningful work (and, since humans are social creatures, this seems to be indisputable), then designing your class and your projects as gatherings will apply productive pressure, especially when establishing their inspirational, vivid, and specific purpose.

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Next week: Using the gathering lens to show how teachers can facilitate effectively and end well.