Last Thursday was the first day of classes at my University. It was almost chilly at 8 am which is fairly unusual for early September in the New York City metro area. We’re usually swamped in sticky humidity. The briskness of the morning accentuated the excitement and the nerves of the beginning of a new semester.
Perfect to start my two first-year writing classes.
The first day is when I want to start building a community based on trust. This usually means showing some vulnerability and care about who we are and what we want to develop into through the next 3 months we are together. I know that the expectation in higher education is to discuss the syllabus as a tool to educate students about the expectations, outcomes, and of course gradings of a class. If one has ever seen a multipage, thousand-plus words syllabus, with no images or graphics, you understand what I’m talking about that it’s not really a community-building exercise.
So instead of discussing the syllabus, I planned and assigned a simple assignment: I asked them to create a slide to be added to a deck I set up and had them pick a minimum of 1 picture that would be a representation of themselves. They would have to use this slide as a backdrop to a very short presentation.
As soon as I posted this on our learning management system, students began to work. I figured after a summer of 1st-year anticipation and a week of orientations, students are ready to share. It is also interesting to see how they interpret the assignment or the questions they raise. For instance, whether the pictures have to be literal or symbolic. And even though I ask for a minimum of one picture, they usually start posting a minimum of 3. One image isn’t enough.
Once in class and after attendance, we got to share. Pets (4 cats, 2 dogs, and a snake). Activities they love like reading, sports, drawing, food (talked a little at length about local pizza), and video games. One student is a volunteer fireman who over the summer fought a forest fire in NJ for 4 days. There’s a young woman from Seattle and we shared our mutual amazement of Mount Rainier. Talked to a soccer player about knowing someone my daughter played soccer with. Places, where they’re from like Texas, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Washington, Italy, India, and lots from New Jersey. Pictures of families and friends are narrated with a sense of longing and memory.
This activity is simple but it’s about meeting students and seeing them as more than just students. It’s about the history and experiences they bring with them to the classroom. For them, and me, to be open and to create a community of learning there needs to be a little bit of openness to start that conversation especially since we’re going to get into some deep topics about race, gender, class, imperialism (colonialism), and writing in general in the coming weeks.
Hopefully, now, that everyone knows each other a little bit, we can move forward.