Another First Day

I’ve had a lot of first days of school, so many that I’ve lost count. The first day of school usually (but not always) looks like this:

• Put on a new item of clothing (today, it was a dress I bought a month or so ago). My mom even asked me the other day if I’d gone school clothes shopping and was a bit surprised when I said no. She told me to go shopping . . . but I don’t have the money right now.
• Get to my classes early. I still worry that I’ll have a hard time finding the right classrooms.
• Be excited to see former students. I’m almost always glad when a student decides to take another class from me. Today, I also ran into former students as I walked around campus. I don’t always remember the names, but I almost always remember their faces. And seeing them brings fond memories of good discussions in classes past.
• Be excited to meet new-to-me students. I love meeting people, and on the first day of class, I get a sense of how the rest of the semester is going to go. Today, my students in Literacy Studies were smart, engaged, and made me laugh. I can tell it’s going to be another good class.
• Memorize the name of every student in my class and find out a little bit about their lives. By the end of both classes, I had every name down. I knew who liked to travel and which students had kids. I know that by Thursday, I’ll forget a few of the names, but I’m almost superstitious about this now. I feel like I *have* to memorize the names on day one or I’ll never remember them. And I believe that it’s really important for teachers to recognize their students’ humanity–by acknowledging that they have names (!) and lives outside of school.
• Do something to introduce the ideas that will be central to the class. Today, in Literacy Studies, I asked my students to share what they remembered about their literacy learning. I also tried to give an introduction to the discipline of literacy–and I talked a little about why I’d made certain curricular decisions. I don’t know whether students remember much about the first day of class, but it feels right to me to contextualize the class right away.
• Try something new (yeah, I know, that’s my mantra right now). In my 175T: Teacher Lecture Series today, we worked on planning the syllabus together. I asked them what kinds of things they wanted to address in class, and it was really helpful to get their ideas. I’ve already emailed a bunch of teachers to see if they’ll be guest speakers in my class. Are any of you teacher-readers willing to drop by, as well?
• Respect the knowledge that my students bring to the class. Also in 175T, one of my students is currently teaching at a local community college. He knows someone who would be a great speaker on one of the topics my students would like to address–I was more than happy to ask him to try to arrange with that person to visit my class.
• End the class abruptly. Now, this isn’t something I try to do, it’s just something that seems to happen. I map out a lot of what I want to talk about, but I always fail to map out an ending. Ah, well. I guess it’s good for students to get a taste of what the semester will be like. The End. (See? That’s what my classes are like.)