You can’t force flow. You can set the course for it.

“When I’m in the flow running it feels so good; I can feel nature.” — Owen DeWire

The boys lined up at the start of a 3K cross-country course in western Maryland, all of them 9 or 10 years old. It was Owen’s first race on the season. The heat index was over 90. I was drenched just walking from one spot on the course to the next.

Not ideal conditions. Thunder the night before. A bee sting for our Winnie (under 10lb dog). Heat you could wear like a coat.

After the finish, Owen had three things to report:

“I couldn’t breathe, I was running so fast.”
“I placed 9th.”
“I made new friends.”

Then came the line I haven’t stopped thinking about: “When I’m in the flow running it feels so good; I can feel nature.”

Nobody could fix the weather that day. But the course itself was built for kids his age: hard enough to be real, still within reach. So he found flow in conditions that should have taken it away (and did for me)!

Flow lives where the challenge fits the skill

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying this state, and his 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience made the idea mainstream. Flow is complete absorption in what you’re doing. You stop worrying about how you look. Time bends. The work becomes its own reward.

Here’s the part educators should hold onto.

Flow lives in a narrow band where the challenge is real and your skill is just enough to meet it. Too hard, and you get anxiety. Too easy, and you get boredom.
Two more conditions set it up: clear goals and immediate feedback. You know what you’re trying to do, and you know right away how it’s going.

Flow spreads to the people watching

Here’s what surprised me. Flow doesn’t stay with the person in it — it can influence those around and be contagious. Both of our boys were at that race, and so were my parents. Owen’s brother, Aiden, wasn’t racing. He still moved faster than I’ve ever seen him move, just to cheer on Owen.

Researchers have noticed this too. A 2005 study of 178 music teachers and 605 of their students found support for teachers’ flow “crossing over” to their students.¹ A smaller classroom study put the idea right in its title: “Contagious Flow.”² Neither study proves cause, and neither was in an elementary school. But both match what I saw on that course. Aiden caught it from Owen.

A good first-grade room is built for flow

In Delaware, where the governor declared a literacy emergency over a year ago, we’ve been working alongside education leaders on early literacy. The state’s Early Literacy Playbook names a set of “Critical Moves,” including teaching a high-quality curriculum grounded in the science of reading, keeping students on grade-level work, and checking often for what they’ve learned.³

The Playbook also spells out what strong phonics teaching looks like, and it reads like a recipe for flow. The teacher directly teaches a sound-spelling pattern and models it. Students get plenty of practice, first on their own and then in real reading. And the teacher checks, formally and informally, all the time, to see who has it and who needs another try.⁴

That’s what a brilliant first-grade teacher in Delaware does, weaving foundational skills and literacy into the rest of the day so each part reinforces the other. Look at that room through the flow lens:

Clear goal. Every student knows the pattern they’re working on.
Immediate feedback. They hear right away whether they’ve got it.
The right stretch. The work is grade-level, with support for the kids who need it to get there and challenge for those already mastering the knowledge and skill(s).

Nobody has to talk first graders into that kind of focus in this example. The room is designed for it. And a teacher who is in flow gives the whole room something to catch.

Try one move this week

Pick one lesson, PLC, or staff meeting you’re leading this week. Ask three questions:

Does everyone know what “done” looks like?
Will they know how it’s going before the end?
Is it a stretch they can reach?

Fix the weakest of the three. That’s it.

Set the course, then cheer

Conditions are rarely ideal. One of Owen’s races before this in his first season was maybe even more impressive. He ran more than a mile with only one shoe! He said he gave the shoe that fell off a coach on another team and kept running (we tape his shoes like I used to in cross country in high school since then so they don’t come off)!

We can’t hand anyone flow. Not our kids, not our students, not the adults we lead. We can set the course. Then we do what Aiden did and cheer like crazy!

Bonus: At the most recent race, Owen said in the car ride back “I just noticed that if you can’t run, life is not that fun”. Gotta love this kid. He ain’t wrong ;).