One of my favorite Barrow traditions is choosing a class name. It’s a time for each class to come together and decide who they are going to be. The class name often reflects not only a class’s interests, but also their hopes and dreams for the year ahead.

As you go through your years at Barrow, you’ll learn how much pride children take in their class names. Already, children in other classrooms are coming up to us in the gym or in the hallway, excitedly sharing the name that they’ve chosen to represent themselves (hi, Water Zombies, Auroras, and Flexible Foxes!).

And now, it’s our turn! We’ve reached the point in the year where our class community is beginning to solidify, and we can discuss what our “together name” will be.

The 2s/3s is the very first year that children vote on their class name. Given that this is new for all students in the Purple Room, we have to begin with the foundational work:

What is voting? Why do people vote?

Voting is making a choice.

Before we can even talk about a class name, we have to practice voting and making choices as a community.

We begin with choices that are concrete and meaningful to children. What are we going to eat for snack? Should we take the stairs or the elevator to get to gross motor spaces?

It is empowering to make a choice that, up until now, teachers have decided. Students learn that they have a say in classroom life, too.

When we vote, we move from “me” to “we.”

Everyone has a say when we vote as a group. Sometimes, our friends make the same choices as us (“I want pretzels, too”). Sometimes, they make a different choice. Even if we don’t vote the same way, we are still part of the same community.

Similarly, sometimes the choice we wanted wins, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s okay to be disappointed if our choice doesn’t win.

Choosing our “together” name.

After getting the hang of voting, it was finally time to brainstorm some ideas for a class name! Armed with a piece of paper, a Sharpie, and our creative minds, we set to creating a list of possible class names.

As we talked, we emphasized focusing on things that are important or special to the whole Purple Room group.

Teachers placed a box around the ideas that kept popping up, or that many children seemed to enjoy. Then, we printed out pictures of those choices and gave them a test run…

Okay, instead of saying, “Purple Room, let’s look at the schedule…,” we’re going to try out these names that you came up with to see if we like them.

Our four finalists are:

* Pretzels

* Tools

* Ice Creams

* Boo!

Make your predictions now…which name do you think was the winner?