A quiet moment before calling a name

It was one of those short breaks between lessons, the kind where you’re just catching your breath. The room was quiet, but you could feel the slight tension of who might be called on next.

The weight of a name

I used to think calling on the eager hand was the right move. It kept things moving, after all. But after a while, you notice the same faces lighting up, and the same ones finding something very interesting on their desk.It wasn't about right or wrong answers. It was about who felt seen, and who felt they could just disappear into the background. That quiet kid in the third row, she knew the material cold, I was sure of it.

Letting the wheel decide

So I started using a simple spinner with everyone's name. The physical act of spinning it created this tiny, shared pause. The mechanical whir was almost comical, cutting through the seriousness.It wasn't magic. Sometimes it landed on someone who was genuinely stuck, and we’d work through it together. But the dynamic shifted. The relief wasn't just for the students who weren't picked; it was for me, too.I wasn't the arbiter anymore. The ‘who’ was out of my hands, which let me focus entirely on the ‘what’—the thinking, the stumbling, the quiet ‘aha’ that followed.

A different kind of listening

When the pressure of selection is off, you hear different things. You notice the half-formed thought, the question posed as a statement.

The space to think

That shared pause before the wheel stops? It’s not dead air. It’s the sound of twenty-five people actually thinking, because it could be any one of them.