What Makes Mabin Magic?
By Junlei Li and Emily Meland
What makes a place unique and special when it comes to human relationships? And what can we learn in the process of looking to understand that?
From a foster care village in rural China, to urban schools in Pittsburgh or the Bronx, to the residential youth care campus in Canada, the work of Simple Interactions is built on noticing, describing, and discovering the relational “heart” of places.
Over the past 10 months, Emily and Junlei were invited by school leaders from The Mabin School, a Junior Kindergarten through Grade 6 independent school located just outside downtown Toronto, to discover what the “Mabin Magic” is all about! With 35 staff members, 150 students, and 45 years of history, The Mabin School is just large enough to hold a rich and diverse range of interactions and relationships, and small enough that we got to know everyone’s first names after just one visit. The school’s focus for the 2024-25 school year was social and emotional learning, and our role was to help understand how simple, everyday interactions in the school support students’ and staff’s development.
Over the course of four visits, we got to know The Mabin School by observing classrooms, hallways, sidewalks, and playgrounds, talking with teachers in workshops, and even meeting with parents. Here, we want to share the progression of our visits as an example of how the Simple Interactions approach adapts and unfolds in a whole school committed to relationship-building.
We want to thank Simone Gravesande (Principal), Ben Peebles (Vice Principal of Strategy, Equity & Learning), Nancy Steinhauer (retired Principal), and all The Mabin School team, from teachers to front desk to custodian, who extended such a warm welcome to us and gave us a chance to discover Mabin’s “Relational Magic” with all of the Mabin community!
From a foster care village in rural China, to urban schools in Pittsburgh or the Bronx, to the residential youth care campus in Canada, the work of Simple Interactions is built on noticing, describing, and discovering the relational “heart” of places.
Over the past 10 months, Emily and Junlei were invited by school leaders from The Mabin School, a Junior Kindergarten through Grade 6 independent school located just outside downtown Toronto, to discover what the “Mabin Magic” is all about! With 35 staff members, 150 students, and 45 years of history, The Mabin School is just large enough to hold a rich and diverse range of interactions and relationships, and small enough that we got to know everyone’s first names after just one visit. The school’s focus for the 2024-25 school year was social and emotional learning, and our role was to help understand how simple, everyday interactions in the school support students’ and staff’s development.
Over the course of four visits, we got to know The Mabin School by observing classrooms, hallways, sidewalks, and playgrounds, talking with teachers in workshops, and even meeting with parents. Here, we want to share the progression of our visits as an example of how the Simple Interactions approach adapts and unfolds in a whole school committed to relationship-building.
- Learning Session 1 (August, 2024): As an introductory workshop, we focused on “What are relationships made of?” Using examples that are familiar to many in the SI community - orphanage work, hospital work, the crossing guard - we started to practice what it means to look closely at even very brief interactions, notice and appreciate what makes them supportive of development, and to connect that to The Mabin School’s own experience.
- In between Learning Sessions (December, 2024): We spent a day doing SI filming in the school from morning drop-off to afternoon send-off. Even after all these years doing SI, there’s nothing more exciting than being the “fly on the wall” in and around a school! Running up and down the stairs, following teachers and children on the playground, and hanging out in the classrooms, we captured the ordinary and everyday moments that make Mabin Mabin. We combed through the footage to figure out what clips are most representative of Mabin’s overall relational practice.
- Learning Session 2 (January, 2025): This time, using video segments from the Mabin staff’s own practice, we asked “What is Mabin made of?” It was such an insightful, affirming session, especially because of the continuity of connections between students and teachers within the school. When we were discussing a scene featuring one teacher and group of students, other teachers would chime in, remembering how the students were when they were younger. It naturally created a “developmental” conversation in which we got to see how small moments, with different staff, over the course of children's schooling experience, contribute to healthy development. It echoes the theoretical idea that social and emotional learning is not merely a set of skills that an individual acquires, but rather a continuously unfolding developmental process that is relational, contextual, and ecological.
- Learning Session 3 (May 2025): As a wonderful bonus and continuation, the school leaders at Mabin started their own documentation and curation of the already-collected video footage to plan a follow-up learning session for staff and parents. We returned to Mabin to participate and co-facilitate the sessions. By now, with a solid and shared foundation of noticing and appreciating everyday interactions, we were together able to extend that idea to thinking about parent-school interactions, staff-staff interactions, and the bigger questions (especially from parents) about what it is about being part of the Mabin community that truly makes the difference.
We want to thank Simone Gravesande (Principal), Ben Peebles (Vice Principal of Strategy, Equity & Learning), Nancy Steinhauer (retired Principal), and all The Mabin School team, from teachers to front desk to custodian, who extended such a warm welcome to us and gave us a chance to discover Mabin’s “Relational Magic” with all of the Mabin community!
Sharing the Magic
By: Michelle Barchuk, Director of Admissions & Communications, The Mabin School
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Each time Dr. Junlei Li and Emily Meland visited The Mabin School over the past year, they certainly brought along their own brand of magic!
We first met this enthusiastic duo during our PD week just before the start of the 2024-2025 school year. It was the perfect time to reflect and look ahead together as a team, while doing so with the Simple Interactions (SI) framework in mind. Before the very first student was dropped off on that first day of school back in September, we were already thinking deeply about the impact and power of the Simple Interactions to come. Relationships, along with the social-emotional development of children, have always been at the heart of our school. The upcoming school year would be no exception. In the blink of an eye, it was December, and time for filming to begin. We welcomed Emily and Junlei back to Mabin where they spent a full day busily filming simple and ordinary moments from inside our classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds. When we had a moment to ourselves at lunch that day, Emily and Junlei shared that they were having no difficulty at all ‘finding’ Simple Interactions taking place at The Mabin School. To learn that there was more than enough footage after only a short time at our school was wonderful to hear. We couldn’t wait until January to have the opportunity to watch some of the videos and discuss them as a team. After many hours dedicated to reviewing the footage from their visit, Emily and Junlei returned to The Mabin School to share some clips with us of the Simple Interactions they captured. Once again, before our students were even back in the building, the entire Mabin staff was dedicating time towards a renewed commitment to Simple Interactions and the science and practice of human interactions in support of children’s development. We had the chance to view a number of videos together and we were captivated! We had many observations and questions to share with each other. It was such a gift to have the opportunity to share in these - seemingly “small” - moments within a typical school day. Slowing down and observing these brief interactions that were building connections was a moving experience for many in the room. At the end of the year, we were able to meet once more, this time with the added bonus of including Mabin parents for the first time. Junlei facilitated an engaging session for our parent community where he shared his expert insights around Simple Interactions along with some of the secret ingredients that make Mabin “magic”. Parents were excited to have this window into their children’s daily school life and were amazed to see the quality of the Simple Interactions at work. One parent remarked that the Mabin teacher - who was seen deftly meeting the needs of 5 learners single handedly and never losing track of what each student needed - was like the conductor of an orchestra. Simple Interactions are a natural part of every school day and they can be easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. During the course of our work together over the past year, Emily and Junlei reminded us of the importance of slowing down and noticing the magic that is already at our fingertips. On behalf of everyone at The Mabin School, thank you, Emily and Junlei, for sharing your expertise with us. We hope you will come back and visit again soon! |
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