Mr. Callahan’s Circle
This blog post was crafted in collaboration with OpenAI's GPT-4o model.
By October, Mr. Callahan was already drinking cold coffee and second-guessing his career choices.
He was only two years into teaching high school biology, and while he loved mitosis, he did not love mutiny. His 4th period Sophomore Biology class had perfected the art of low-level chaos: half-whispers that turned into roasts, “group work” that became gossip hour, and one kid—Bryson—who seemed to test gravity by tilting his chair just far enough.
“They’ll talk to each other,” he vented to the school’s behavior coach, Ms. Jenkins, one Friday after a particularly rough lab. “But they won’t talk to me. Or answer a question unless I bribe them with Jolly Ranchers. And even then, it’s usually just Jerrell yelling ‘C’ and pretending it’s multiple choice.”
Ms. Jenkins laughed—one of those booming, from-the-gut laughs. “You know what you need?” she said, pointing a dramatic finger at him. “Circles.”
Mr. Callahan blinked. “Like… Venn diagrams?”
“Nope. Like talking circles. Five minutes a day. Emotional check-in. Community builder. Something that doesn’t feel like another assignment. You join too—none of this lurking-over-the-clipboard business. I’ll show you how.”
He was skeptical. But desperate. So he let her teach him how to lead a circle. She called them “low-stakes, high-trust reps.”
He learned the Circle Agreements:
Listen with your heart
Speak from your heart
Trust yourself
Share just enough
Embrace curiosity
Respect the talking piece
And on Monday, he entered Room 214 not with a do-now slide, but with a single prompt: “What’s one thing you did this weekend that made you smile?”
He passed around the talking piece—a goofy rubber frog he’d found in a drawer—and waited.
“Do we have to do this?” groaned Kiara, flipping her braids off her shoulder.
“You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to,” Mr. Callahan said. “But we are going to sit in this circle for four minutes. So, your call.”
The silence stretched. Then Ava, usually quiet and academically solid, shrugged. “I went to my little cousin’s birthday. He face-planted into the cake.”
The class chuckled. The frog moved on. Jerrell said something about eating four McChickens. Kiara rolled her eyes, but when it was her turn, she muttered, “Watched Netflix with my grandma. We binged Dateline. It’s her jam.”
It wasn’t perfect. But it was something.
By November, Mr. Callahan rotated circle types: sometimes full-class circles, sometimes concentric ones (inner and outer circles switching off), and on busy days, three-person groups with a quick prompt like “One thing that’s annoying me and one thing I’m proud of.”
The impact? Subtle at first. But by December, something shifted.
Students began sharing out more during labs. Even the academically shaky ones like Luis started taking stabs at hypotheses. Bryson still tilted his chair, but now he also leaned in to help Kiara with microscope adjustments. The off-topic chatter still happened—but it was less mean. When a joke crossed a line, students sometimes called each other out before Mr. Callahan had to.
And they started asking questions.
“Wait—so if chloroplasts are only in plant cells, do they, like, photosynthesize in the dark?” Ava asked one January morning, brows furrowed.
“No,” said Jerrell, “unless you’re a mushroom. Mushrooms are wild.”
Mr. Callahan laughed. “Okay, let’s clarify that one.”
By February, he was moving through content faster—not because kids were magically obedient, but because he didn’t have to keep putting out a dozen behavior fires before getting to meiosis.
There were still moments—Bryson got ISS after an altercation in March, and Kiara stormed out mid-lab in April after a partner swap gone wrong. But when they came back, the circle was still there. So was Mr. Callahan, sitting in it with them.
He started to know his students not just as learners, but as people. He learned Ava wanted to be a vet. That Jerrell secretly wrote poetry. That Kiara was fiercely loyal to her grandma. That Bryson used humor to cover for reading struggles.
In May, just before finals, he ended a circle with one last question: “What’s one thing you’ve learned this year—about science or yourself?”
Luis said, “I learned I don’t hate biology. I just needed someone to explain it in normal words.”
Ava said, “I learned that plants are weirdly more interesting than people.”
Jerrell said, “I learned not to mess with Kiara when she’s hungry.”
Kiara smirked, “Facts.”
And Mr. Callahan? He just smiled.
That afternoon, he stayed late, grading finals with the windows open and a half-empty iced coffee sweating on his desk. He didn’t realize he was humming until Ms. Jenkins popped her head in.
“You survived,” she said.
“I did more than survive,” he replied. “They actually learned something. And I did too.”
“Oh yeah? What’d you learn?”
He leaned back in his chair. “That starting with connection doesn’t take away from content—it makes space for it.”
She winked. “Told you so.”
As he packed up for the summer, Mr. Callahan looked around his room, now covered in student projects and doodles and a thank-you note from Bryson that read: “You didn’t give up on me. Thanks, frog dude.”
It wasn’t perfect. It never would be. But it was real. And next year, he’d start with the circle.
Always.
