Report from the ABEABC conference, May 2007, Chilliwack BC Submitted by Lee Emery, Chair, University Preparation Department, TRU My First Day of Class

“A high quality education begins with relationships.”
Linda Darling-Hammond

Having never facilitated a workshop before, I decided I'd offer to do a presentation at last May's ABEABC Conference. The title of my session was “My First Day of Class”, and I suggested the folks who would be most interested in attending would be instructors who teach lecture based discipline specific courses as I do.

With so much content to cover in so little time (65 hours in my case), it is difficult not to plunge right in on day one with content, forgetting the importance of the affective domain in learning. Some years ago I decided to make the first day of my chemistry, physics and math classes all about the students.

My idea was to simply make this workshop I had decided to do be a simulation of my first day of class, trying to ignore the fact that these “students” would be my peers and colleagues.

When my students arrive on the first day of class, no doubt being curious and experiencing various levels of anxiety, they are greeted with recorded music and a poster welcoming them to the class. They find their places and wait for the class to begin, as I smile and acknowledge them.

When it's time for the class to begin, I do one of two things. If the furniture is easily moved, I ask the students if they would indulge me and push all the desks and chairs to the walls and make a circle of chairs in the centre of the room. If this is impossible or too much of a bother (we have a wide variety of classrooms at TRU) I ask them to come forward and select a card from the array I have on a table. At this point I have said very little and have not yet introduced myself.

In the first scenario, we engage in a “Learners' Circle” or “Way of Council” (or whatever moniker you may be familiar with) and some object serves as a talking stick. If it's a chemistry class, for example, I would choose some piece of laboratory equipment. As we go around the circle, we learn our names, where we're from, why we're taking this particular course, our goals and the most important thing we would have the class know about us.

In the second scenario, the cards, placed face down, are in duplicate pairs. After everyone has selected a card, they find their mate and go off for a fifteen minute chat. Whether or not there is an odd number of students, I find a student to interview as well. Upon returning to the class, each person has someone to introduce to us all. This provides everyone with basically the same personal information about our classmates as we would have learned in the Learners' Circle. It goes without saying that no one is “forced” to participate or to disclose every thing that is asked about them. However, I have never had a student who was so uncomfortable with this that they completely opted out of the activity. I think most students are enormously relieved that by this time they are not having to take copious notes on some obscure topic they've been told is necessary to master in order to become a nurse or whatever their goal might be.

The rest of the period we go over what the course will be like, the course outline, expectations and protocols and so forth. I also indicate that they have two open standing invitations which they can take advantage of at any time: an opportunity to teach the class and a request to have a standing ovation.

I find that by the end of this first class, students are engaged with each other, conversing and laughing. I would contend that they feel grateful for having had an interest taken in them as individuals while at the same time feeling they belong to a collective enterprise. Often at the end of the semester, students will come up to me and say that, while they enjoyed the class, the best thing was the first day when we got to know each other. I believe this small investment in class time, building relationships and positive attitudes, pays dividends.

Getting back to the actual workshop itself, all the participants were very enthusiastic, although few in number, and employed in nonstructured, self-paced, continuous intake sort of environments; they were well versed and practiced in these sorts of activities. No one taught in the type of learning environment I do and for which I designed the workshop. It was definitely preaching to the converted.

However, what followed was a scintillating discussion and sharing of ideas, activities and experiences, all of which happened to address the affective domain of learning, how we can encourage learners and ways in which we can help build self-esteem. I came away with as much new raw material, as I'm sure I provided my participants with.

I distributed to my “students” a booklet I had prepared containing other activities which I do. For example, I put in the institutional registration mail-outs my students receive a letter of welcome from me; I occasionally take fifteen minutes to read them a particular favourite children's story of mine; I ask them at the start of each day's class for any good news they are aware of and can share.

I think what is most important for many of us in adult education, is that in our work we are free to be who we are, are valued for who we are. This allows us to be authentic. I know that students greatly appreciate this, and it helps to make the distinction between who is the learner and who is the teacher more obscure.