Using our social memory

This blog post is a transcript of Episode 105 of my podcast/YouTube series. Because of that, it is not written to be grammatically/syntactically correct.

You can listen here and watch here.

Once upon a time, there were autistic, ADHD, and anxious students who didn't know how to initiate a social conversation with someone that they knew.

Some students weren't able to think of something that the person they were talking to liked or liked to talk about, so they ended up using generic conversation starters like, "Hey, what's up?" Or, "How's it going?"

Some students were able to think of things they knew about the other person, but they didn't know how to use that information to start a conversation.

I created the lesson I'm sharing this week for all of these students.

In this lesson, students learn the difference between an informational and a social conversation, and how to initiate a conversation with someone they know based on things they know about them.

The week that this episode is releasing is actually the week that this lesson is what my students are learning. I do these episodes randomly. At the end of every episode I do that random number generator. So this is the only time all semester that the lesson I'm talking about on the podcast actually lines up with the lesson that we're doing that week. So that's pretty cool.

This lesson is a few lessons after our show and tell lesson, and that episode was just a few weeks ago on the podcast, maybe three or four episodes before this one. So if you missed that episode, I highly recommend checking out that episode before you do this episode, because it'll just make more sense and it'll help you kind of see where things are coming from in this lesson.

There are a couple lessons before this one that I haven't shared on the podcast, and this lesson builds onto them. All of the lessons in my modules are cumulative. There are eight lessons in each module and they are cumulative, meaning we start with one concept in lesson one and we build on that concept for eight weeks. Because this is lesson seven in module two, there have already been six weeks of content that this is building off of.

Previously in my groups, we have worked on asking questions or making comments about the things people tell us. That's what we did during the show and tell week a few weeks ago. These are ways that we can keep the conversation going and show the other person that we're interested in them, in what they like, in what they're talking about. So these keep a conversation going. What we talk about this week is how to start a conversation using what we know about somebody. I think starting a conversation is much more challenging than joining a conversation or participating in one that's already happening, exactly for all the things that we're talking about in this episode. Starting a conversation requires you to have something to say, and a lot of times when students aren't able to take what they know about somebody and use that to start a conversation, they have what I call generic conversation starters like, "Hey, what's up?" "How's it going?" "How are you?"

Those are fine. Those are surface level. Those are basic. Those are fine. The reason I want my students to develop a stronger skill set when it comes to initiating a conversation with someone that we know is because remembering things about other people and bringing those things up later goes really far when it comes to having a reputation for being friendly. If you think about the last time somebody remembered something about you and brought it up later, it just sparks something in us. It makes us feel important. It makes us feel special. It's a strategy that people are taught often in the sales world, in the customer service world. I know somebody that I've worked with in a professional capacity, we meet twice a year and he will always ask me about whatever we talked about last time. So even though it was six months ago, and sometimes it's no longer relevant.

Also, that just reminded me of a funny story. Somebody that I used to have as a teacher at Starfish Social Club would tell me that there was a student, this was several years ago, and he was really good at remembering social information about other people. And so on a probably monthly basis, he would ask my co-worker about his girlfriend, who was no longer his girlfriend. But it just shows how much that student paid attention to social information about other people and was able to retain that information and then bring it up again later. Unfortunately the topic that he was talking about was a little touchy, but it's such a great example of being able to capture that information and use it. We call that our social memory.

Social memory are the things that we remember about other people. Side note strategy: If this is something that you struggle with, if you struggle with remembering things about other people, a really common, helpful, easy way to get better at this is to use the contact feature in your phone. When you open somebody's contact information in your phone, you can take notes. It has a preset fields for things like their address, their birthday, I think maybe even social media handles. But there's also a note section. I'm speaking about an iPhone since that's what I have, and I realize that was probably presumptuous of me. I don't know about other phone types, but in an iPhone, there's a note section for every contact that you have. You can use that to keep notes on people that you see, especially if you know you're going to see them again. You can keep notes on the last things that you guys talked about. You can keep notes on things that you know or remember about them, maybe things that you would like to bring up again, if you know they have something important coming up, if you know they're taking a trip, anything that you might want to think about talking to them about at a later date. You can put it in the notes section of their contact.

So I share kind of this backstory with the students about what social memory is and why it's important. Again, it goes a really long way toward helping us have a reputation for being friendly when we notice things about other people, we remember them, and we bring them up again later. I even, several years ago, my dog would go with me to Starfish Social Club, and she passed away in 2022. And for a while, probably a year afterward, students would still bring her up and just say, you know, "I Miss Molly," or "I remember when Molly used to be here," or "I still feel sad about Molly sometimes," and it was just a really touching moment for me, because this is exactly what we're talking about.

Sometimes it's taking something that we're thinking and saying it out loud. There's probably plenty of times that we all remember something about somebody or think something about somebody, and just don't say it. But saying it is a great way to let that person know that we're thinking about them, that something reminded us of them.

Let's get into what I do with this lesson and how I teach the students about it. We do talk about the difference between an informational conversation and a social conversation. A lot of my students are pretty good at informational conversations, which is basically exchanging information. It's not even always more than two exchanges. I give examples like asking your parents what's for dinner. That may be a question and an answer, and that's it. It may be going into a store and asking somebody where the game consoles are. Maybe a question and an answer, and that's it. A lot of my students are pretty good at informational conversations. They're able to ask a question and get the information they need, and vice versa. If somebody asks them an informational question, they're able to give the information.

The challenge is that these aren't social conversations. A social conversation is a conversation where we are trying to learn more about somebody, connect with somebody, find things we have in common with somebody. We're trying to make a social connection with this person. In order to do that, if all we're doing is asking informational questions, we're not making a social connection.

So the easiest way that I have to delineate them is that a social conversation is asking questions that are specific to this person and their experience. They are things that you could not Google. for example. Most informational questions you could probably Google. A social question is something that you cannot Google. You have to actually ask this person.

Examples of social wondering questions could be based on things that we notice about somebody, things we remember, things we've heard. We start with the easiest type of social wondering question that there is, and that is: What's your favorite? This is the easiest type of social wondering question, the easiest type of question you can ask to get to know somebody a little bit better. This is not what I would ask somebody I already know, this is not how we would start a conversation, but I teach this to the students in this lesson so that we can start to understand the difference between an informational and a social conversation.
So in the group, I explain a 'What's your favorite?' question. Basically, "What's your favorite...?" and then you get to finish that question. Each student in the group gets to come up with their own 'What's your favorite?' question. We go around the group. I usually go first, just to model and demonstrate. I may say, "What's your favorite color?" Everybody in the group has a chance to answer, and then I answer. Then I'll pick the next person, and they get to ask whatever question they want to.

I tend to give basic examples for students who maybe have a hard time thinking of something. So basic examples would be: What's your favorite color, What's your favorite food, What's your favorite day of the week, What's your favorite subject in school if your students are kids, What's your favorite thing to do? These are all kind of the most basic 'What's your favorite?' questions.

Some students want to ask their own and I really love hearing what they come up with. What's your favorite holiday, what's your favorite animated movie, what's your favorite type of ice cream. I just really love giving everybody the opportunity to ask what they want to ask and what's on their mind.

After we do that, I take it up a little bit and add a little bit more complexity to it. We talk about asking social wondering questions based on what we already know about this person. So by this point, even students who are new to Starfish in this module, who just started when we started module two, we're on week seven. So at this point, we've had six weeks of being together in a group because I only enroll students at the beginning of a module. So even if students are new, they've been here for six weeks already. And we've gone through show and tell, plus two lessons after show and tell. So they know several things about everybody in the group at this point because of how much we've been working on listening to each other, show and tell, asking questions, making comments. We've also had two weeks previous to this where we used the information we learned about people in show and tell and made connections with things we have in common. So this is not a lesson that I would do when students don't know each other. It's not a lesson I would do right after show and tell even, because we've had a couple weeks in between where we've done some really awesome building lessons that lead up to the lesson that's this week.

So we talk more about the concept of not wanting to be generic when we know somebody. We want to be able to ask them something that's specific about them if we're going to start a conversation. And like I said earlier in the episode, Hey, what's up? How's it going? Those are fine. Those are great for someone who is just learning to start conversations in general. But they don't get... You typically get the same type of answer that you would get if somebody asked, "How are you?" You typically get a one word, obligatory response, not a conversation. So if a student asks another student, "Hey, what's up?" the typical answer is going to be, "Nothing." They might not even reciprocate, right? It might be "Hey, what's up?" "Nothing." And then the awkward silence. Or "How's it going?" "Good, how are you?" "Good." And then the awkward silence. So if our students are able to progress past that, I definitely would recommend it.

Everything in social is tiered, is leveled. And so once students learn the next step, there are lots more steps still. There's never an end to the places that we can take social. And so wherever students are is awesome, and if they go one step further, that's amazing. My goal is to see how much further we can go, which is one of the reasons students stay in Starfish for years sometimes, because we're just continuing to level up and level up and level up. So maybe the student who two years ago was just learning how to ask somebody a question like, "Hey, what's up?" Or "How's it going?" Maybe this year they're able to get the hang of a social wondering question. There's always another level. We're never done with levels.

Okay, so let's see. At this point we go back to the things that students shared in show and tell. This is the third week that we've remembered the things that students shared in show and tell, so by this point, everybody can remember at least one thing about somebody else. One of the things in the previous lessons is we make circles for everybody with their name on it and the three things they shared in show and tell. And I use those as models over and over throughout the rest of this module.

I'll pick up somebody's circle, and I'll ask the students first, "What's something that you remember that this person shared?" And somebody will say something that they remember. And so then my question is, for example, if that person shared a book about Star Wars, my question to the group is, "If you know that this student likes to read books about Star Wars, we could ask them something like, 'Have you read other books about Star Wars.?' We could ask them questions about books. 'What other kinds of books do you like to read?' We can ask them questions about Star Wars. 'Do you also like the movies?'" So we can take one thing that someone shared at show and tell and think of things that we can ask them about that thing that they shared.

If somebody shows us a picture of their pet, what are some social wondering questions we could ask them about their pet? Let's say that we all came to group today. We haven't seen each other in a week. What's a social wondering question you could ask this person about their pet as a way to start a conversation? And so I'll ask that to the group and students will say things like, "We can ask them if they have any funny videos of their pet." We've already done the basics during show and tell, like we've already established what the pet's name is, the pet's age, maybe. We could ask them if they played with their pet over the weekend. So that's what we start to get into in this lesson is taking what we know about somebody and generating questions based on that.

When we do that, we're going to get a much more engaging response than just a "Hey, what's up?" Or "How are you?" or even, "How was your weekend?" When we can ask them specifically about things we know about them, we're going to get a much more engaging response, and it's a signal to that person that we were paying attention to them, and we remember something about them. I let everybody pick one person in the group. It can even include me, because I participate in Show and Tell as well. So they pick one person in the group. I ask them before they ask a question to say out loud what they remember that this person shared. And then I say, "Okay, so based on what you remember they shared, what's a question you can ask them?"

Another way that I add a way to make this a little more applicable is we talk about asking people about their weekends in the context of the thing that we know about them. So if the group meets on Tuesday, we would ask about the weekend that just passed. If they meet on Thursday, we might ask about the weekend coming up, just for some timeline references. So again, if we're talking about a student who showed us a Star Wars book and it's Tuesday, we could ask, "Did you read your Star Wars book over the weekend?" Or "Have you gotten any more Star Wars books? Did you get anything new over the weekend?" If it's a weekend coming up, we might ask something like, "Are you planning to read anything this weekend?" So that's how we can combine something we already know about somebody with the weekend. It gives it some parameters, it gives it some structure.

That's what I ask the students to do next. They get to pick the person in the group that they want to ask. They say out loud something that they remember about them, and then they see if they can frame that thing into a question, ideally using the weekend as a context.

Everybody is able to do this to different degrees. All students are different. Some students really get this, and they are able to do it very easily right away. For some students, today is not going to be the day that they're able to do it easily, and that's absolutely fine. It gives us the opportunity to use this strategy for every student in the group, everybody gets to try, everybody gets to practice, and we all get to hear each other trying and practicing. It's definitely a group effort.

I also allow the conversations to continue as long as it naturally progresses. If a student asks another student a question and it turns into an authentic conversation, I'm going to let that continue until the conversation is done. Typically, what happens is other students will also jump in and join on the conversation, which is exactly why we're here. This lesson is a very short time of me explaining, and most of the hour we spend practicing, because most of the time the questions turn into conversations, and other students join the conversations as well, which is obviously the ideal outcome and end result that I'm looking for. So I let those conversations go as long as we have time for everybody to take a turn before we're done for the day. That's really my only parameter is time. I want to make sure that everybody has a turn before we leave.

And I always allow students to choose me, especially students that I know are more socially anxious. I always want them to have a way to practice what we're learning with the person that they feel the most comfortable with, which is me. And so I always allow me to be an option so that students... I want them to be as successful as possible, and that's one way that I can help facilitate that.

We can do multiple turns of this, so we do this for as long as time allows. If everybody's done one turn and we still have time, we do round two. Pick another student. Think about what you know about them and what's a question that you can ask them.

So that's this lesson. This is module two, lesson seven. Like I said, it happens to be the lesson that we will be doing this week in my groups with my students. Human beings like to talk about ourselves, so this is a great... This whole module, especially the second half of it, is a great opportunity for everybody in the group to have that chance to talk about themselves and to share things about themselves, while we are also building social connections and conversation skills.

Okay, let's see. We have one more episode before the holiday break, so let me see what we're going to do. It has lesson 20. Okay, so lesson 20 would be module three, lesson four. Module three is all about conversations. Everything in that module builds on what I consider the easiest things in conversations to the most difficult parts of conversations. And lesson four is about social filter and social fake. They're two different concepts but I think they go together really well, and so I put them together in one lesson: Social filter and social fake. So that's what we'll talk about on our next episode. I'll see you then.