In a first-grade classroom, it might be a new pair of shoes.

A child arrives wearing them, and Lauren Conner could move immediately into the morning routine. There is plenty to do. Reading needs to happen. Math needs to happen. Twenty-something little people have arrived carrying twenty-something different sets of needs.

But sometimes Conner asks the important question first.

How fast do those new shoes make you go?

It takes perhaps 30 seconds. Yet to Conner, moments like that are not interruptions to teaching. They are part of it.

"Sometimes I feel like we get so wrapped up in, 'Oh, I gotta get to this math lesson,' or, 'I have to get to this,'" she said. "Sometimes it's just those small moments, just sitting and connecting with your class."

Because once a child knows the teacher sees them, something changes.

"I've made this connection, and now I can do that hard thing," Conner said. "It's gonna be hard, but my teacher is there to help me through that."

Conner is in her ninth year at Tri-Valley and her 12th year teaching overall. She grew up nearby in Heyworth and knew by third grade what she wanted to become. Her teacher, Mrs. Corbly, inspired her.

"Very special," Conner remembers.

Years later, Conner now occupies that same consequential place in the lives of first graders, teaching children who are still learning how to sit together on the carpet, remember routines and, occasionally, tie their shoes.

"Our brains are just always on the go," she said.

Somewhere amid all of that activity, Conner and her colleagues are also doing the foundational work of teaching children to read. A few years ago, Tri-Valley adopted UFLI Foundations, a phonics program developed through the University of Florida Literacy Institute. Conner describes the change as a "complete game changer."

The approach deliberately breaks language into the patterns and sounds children need to decode words. Early in the year, Conner might put a sentence in front of her students and ask what they notice. A child spots a short vowel sound. Someone recognizes a digraph. Another sees a silent E. As the months pass, the observations multiply.

"They're starting to use the terminology that we're using," Conner said. "By the end of the year, they've pointed out so many things."

Then she shows them what they have done.

"Look at all of the things that you found."

The children are impressed with themselves. That may be as important as any particular word they have learned.

Conner sees reading ability and confidence developing together. Children begin approaching unfamiliar words with tools rather than fear. They break them apart. They recognize patterns. They discover that something they couldn't read before is something they can read now.

Then comes the possibility of loving it. Conner believes one way to build that love is simply to pay attention to what a child already cares about. If it's dinosaurs, find the dinosaur book. The words may initially be difficult, but curiosity provides a reason to struggle through them.

"Will they be able to read all of those words yet? No, not yet," Conner said. "But that can challenge them to want to learn those things, to want to read the page."

She also wants children to discover books they never would have chosen themselves. A child convinced that nonfiction isn't interesting gets nudged toward something new and suddenly becomes absorbed in it.

"Now you're so invested in it," Conner tells them.

That process of noticing, encouraging, and nudging extends far beyond reading. If Conner could sit beside the younger version of herself and offer some advice, she knows what she would say.

"Always be uplifting to other people. If you find something good in somebody, go and tell them that."

She practices that in her classroom. Thank you for pushing in that chair. That was kind of you. Thank you for holding the door. She wants children to understand that kindness is worth noticing, even when the act itself seems almost insignificant. The little things, Conner believes, become really big things.

Perhaps that is also why Tri-Valley feels so natural to her. Conner describes the community as a place where "you don't know a stranger." People wave. Neighbors help. Families rally around one another when something goes wrong. Teachers do the same for each other inside the school.

"You just never feel alone. You always feel like you have somebody that you can go to."

For Conner, the culture of a community and the culture of a first-grade classroom may not be so different after all. Both are built through hundreds of seemingly inconsequential acts.

Someone waves. Someone helps. Someone notices. Someone tells a child, I saw the good thing you just did.

And sometimes a teacher stops everything for half a minute because a six-year-old has new shoes. She asks the question. The child lights up. And then, together, they get back to the hard things.