The moment I stepped over the threshold, I was transported into a wild jungle.
The cement walls became towering green trees, the suspension ceiling became a tangle of low-hanging vines, and the blue area rug became a rushing river ready to take me on a journey to magical learning.
Like Lucy stepping through the magical wardrobe to discover Narnia, I stepped through the door to Mrs. Bakuhnâs second-grade classroom.
All of these years later, I can recall the surprise of seeing her classroom jungle for the first time. I was in awe. There was a thick withered tree trunk in the middle of the room complete with sprawling branches and bright green leaves and a howler monkey hanging from one of the vines. Never mind they were made of paper and stuffing. To me, it was magic.
The surprise of that day marked only the first of many surprisingly wonderful experiences in my second-grade classroom: the day I sat in our special reading tent for our independent reading time, the day we were explorers at the Pittsburgh Zoo, the day we traveled deep under the sea during our 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea read aloud, and the day we sang âBaby Belugaâ while we learned about beluga whales.
Itâs no mystery why, despite being only eight at the time, I can still remember so much about that school year. Mrs. Bakuhn knew something magical about learning. She had discovered the first element of wonder: surprise.
There arenât too many situations in which we can imagine grown adults ready and willing to crouch under tables or slide behind bookshelves with hushed tones and dimmed lights. But weâre guessing youâve experienced or at least observed the classic birthday surprise at least once in your life.
We love bursting out of our hiding spots with a hearty âSURPRISE!â to unsuspecting friends on their birthdays, and we love even more the exhilarated âyou got me!â surrender when the surprise has played out for them.
Weâve all had experience with the excitement that comes from a big surprise. When was the last time you were surprised? Itâs probably not hard to remember a truly exciting surprise because, quite frankly, surprises are memorable.
Surprises create wonder.
Psychologists call this phenomenon âflashbulb memory.â Coined in 1977 by researchers Roger Brown and James Kulik, a flashbulb memory is a distinct memory created by an emotional disruption in someoneâs normal routine. Brown and Kulik studied national and global events that impacted people on a large scale, and the results explain why we can remember seemingly trivial details of a big surprise party that occurred three years ago, but canât remember what we ate for lunch two days ago.
Care to give it a try? Think of a special day in your life. Here are some examples:
- The day you found out you got your first teaching job
- The day you graduated from college
- The day you met your partner
- The day your child was born
Chances are you can recall surprising details about that day. Can you remember what you were wearing, who you called on the phone, what you ate? Itâs pretty surprising, isnât it? Especially considering how easy it is to forget what you did two days ago, let alone two weeks. Need further evidence? Hereâs a sweet example from Abbyâs childhood.
Sometimes surprise is as sweet as the first taste of sprinkle-topped ice cream on a crisp summer night. Sometimes, surprise is ice creamâor at least thatâs how the story of one of my most delightful flashbulb memories from my childhood goes:
Itâs a sweet summer evening, and just as the fireflies begin to light up the sky, my Very Unreasonable Mother calls us inside from our barefoot game of hide-and-seek. Right on cue, we protest this early bedtime, pleading with our mom: âBut itâs SUM-MER!â After much protest, we reluctantly pull on our pajamas, brush our teeth, and stomp our way into our bedrooms. âYouâre not even going to read us a book?â we ask incredulously, as our mother betrays us by shaking her head no. Denied our beloved books, my sister and I furiously whisper from our bunk beds after the traitors we call our parents tuck us in. Fifteen minutes later, just as weâre about to give up the fight and attempt to actually sleep, we are alarmed by a ridiculous clatter of banging pots and pans.
First, we hear the racket, then the familiar creaks that signal someone is walking up the stairs. Then comes the unexpected singsong voice of my mom: âGet out of your beds and get into the van! Weâre getting ice cream!â
We shoot up from our beds in utter delight and astonishment. âWait, really?â we ask in surprise, as we realize our parents arenât joking. Weâre really getting ice cream! Soon enough, my mom and dad are loading all five of us kids into our minivan, and weâre on our way to get a good, old-fashioned ice cream cone. As we try to race the heat melting our cones, we canât stop laughing and replaying that joyful moment when our bedtime sentence turned into a sweet treat.
Iâll never forget that night. To this day, my siblings and I still love to spontaneously swerve into McDonaldâs drive-throughs just for a little taste of that childhood nostalgia. My parents paid less than five dollars for fifty-cent cones for our entire family that night, but the sheer surprise was priceless.
As you can see, it makes sense that formal definitions of surprise reveal words like âamazement,â âmarvel,â and, of course, âwonder,â which pop up in partnership with words like âunexpectedâ and âsudden.â In their book Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected, Tania Luna and LeeAnn Renninger provide a fascinating look at how the element of surprise can help us harness these words to grow and learn. They argue that we need to abandon the negative feelings associated with the unknown and unexpected to thrive in a life filled with wonder.
The good news is that teachers were embracing this principle long before Luna and Renninger wrote their book, and for good reason. Learning by surprise is a concept that psychologists and educators alike have studied for years. In fact, researchers often use the word ânoveltyâ to describe this learning mechanism. When something novel or unexpected happens within the familiar context of your classroom, your students are more likely to remember those eventsâjust as weâre more likely to remember that surprise birthday party.
Letâs take David Johnson, a math teacher from Wisconsin, as an example. Some forty years before Luna and Renningerâs book, Johnson was one of the first educators to specifically identify the element of surprise as an effective classroom technique.
âIs the element of surprise present in your classroom NOW? I believe the element of surprise belongs there!â Johnson declared.
Aimee E. Stahl and Lisa Feigenson, researchers from Johns Hopkins Universityâs Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, conducted an interesting study that supports Johnsonâs assertion. They looked at how eleven-month-old babies react to the element of surprise. By revealing a ball in an unexpected way, like rolling it off a table without dropping or moving it through a wall, they tested the babiesâ reactions. Babies could be seen rolling, pounding, and squishing the âsurpriseâ ball, which resulted in more engagement, discovery, and most importantly, effective learning.
Dr. Judy Willis, a neurologist and middle school teacher, closes the gap between the laboratory and the classroom. In her book, Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning, she encourages teachers to utilize surprise:
Use surprise to bring studentsâ brains to attention. Consider employing the technique of surprise to light up studentsâ brains and illuminate the pathways to memory storage. Starting a lesson with an unanticipated demonstration or having something new or unusual in a classroom will spark student attention a...