Our Winter term has officially begun and I've distributed the syllabi and led the opening discussions for all my courses this semester. The first day a new class meets is always a thrill for me -- I love the "tabula rasa" feeling of the class, even when I have a roomful of familiar faces.

In my fiction writing class, I used a technique I invented that you might consider using in any class as an icebreaker. I asked students to list items they have in their (dorm) rooms that no one would suspect. Then they swapped lists with another person at their table and I asked everyone to engage in a piece of creative writing using a first sentence that begins "Secretly, I collect...." Then I had every student stand up and introduce themselves to the class by either sharing something weird that they have in their rooms, or reading their fictional piece as if they were that secret collector. This generated a lot of laughter and good cheer.

Here's a collection of teaching tips for the first day of classes brought to us by Honolulu Community College (check their reference lists for more good sources, too). The Pig Personality Profile is frivolous fun, but probably a good icebreaker and something I might even use when I teach Memoir Writing again in 2005-6. I especially liked reviewing Joyce T. Povlacs' 101 Things You Can Do the First Three Weeks of Class. If your term is just getting started too, you might want to review this list.

Here's a carefully worded google search that results in a great sampler of more on this topic.

Of course, the first few weeks of class are always fun until "the honeymoon is over" and students start getting their grades. Attitudes shift and some become disenchanted. They enjoy the class antics, but begin to get hostile about homework. I bet the students who start to become disenchanted with a class don't realize that no matter what time of the year it is, the teacher is usually just as optimistic and hopeful as they are on the first day...that every day is a first day, of sorts...and that the teacher hopes the student will do better and better over time. That sounds cheesy, I know, but it's true -- you've got to be an undying optimist to be a teacher. What's hard to manage is the feeling of some students that grades "put them in their place" -- as if they were categorized fixed into a static "place" they can't get out of. Although I'm probably an undying optimist to the point of absurdity on this score, I want to try harder this term to help liberate and uplift my students to do better and improve. How can I keep their first day excitement going all term? Of course, they have to meet me halfway and help themselves. When that happens, it can be magic. The joy of teaching is often seeing a student self-actualize and take charge of their learning in this way. Sure, it's a cliche, but you feel like a parent who's been pushing a kid on their training wheels for weeks, and then finally the kid is on two wheels, peddling madly down the hill, balancing and zooming all on their own....smiling wildly in the wind.

Hmm...I'm slipping into romanticizing the profession. I must still be buzzing with the first day excitement and eager to see if it's still holding up the next time class meets.

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