First Day of Class - 9/3/08

I woke up this morning and wasn't feeling very well- not a great start to a first day of teaching, especially at college level. However, when I met Kate and some of the others in the office before class and made sure I had all of my copies and materials ready, not only was I feeling better, but I began to get really excited.

Kate and I walked over to Dunbar together and got our classrooms ready. I put the desks in a circle so that they would be ready for my icebreaker and put all of the necessary info on the board. The crazy thing was that I had students come in with me, ready for class, almost 20 minutes before class and once I was ready, it was just awkward to be in there with them - all of their faces fixed on me, waiting for instruction.

I started class by making sure the students knew what the CRN was for the class and having them all check to make sure they were in the right classroom. My plan was to take attendance with the icebreaker, but I ended up just doing it beforehand to put them all at ease. For the icebreaker, I had the students go around the circle, say their names, and something they liked or disliked that began with the same letter as their first name. Although it is kind of a lame activity, I prefaced it as that and explained that the purpose was for me to get to know all of their names right away. It worked well for me and I think the students were able to learn most of their classmates name too.

I then passed out the syllabus and highlighted some of the important information for them. I didn't want to read it to them, because they can read and I didn't want to bore them. Plus they can read it later to find out the info they need.

After that I had them get contact information from each other so they could contact each other with questions.

The writing prompt was the thing I was most excited about. I had the students choose one of two options:
1. Finish these thoughts: When I write, I ... I love to write when... Writing is a hassle if...
2. Share a writing memory, good or bad
I felt like a majority of the students were honest with me and with themselves, however they didn't go really deep. Some just took the chance to complain and gripe about me without even giving me a chance. I didn't let it bother me, though; I just laughed to myself.

The writing inventory was also one of the things I was excited about. We had done this as a staff in our meeting and I thought it was great. My students weren't quite as excited. At first, they were a little confused. This was a fault on my part. I didn't model for them very well what I meant. I noticed this quickly and tried to walk them through it a little. They ended up with a lot of good, but similar responses. I was surprised to find out many of them thought they were good at research papers and essays. The general concensus was that they were all good at communicating with technology...aka text messaging, facebook, email...

After filling out a student info sheet that was made to look like a facebook profile page, I ended the class. I felt pretty good about how the day went and hoped that I could really reach my students this semester. Each one seemed great to me. They were even a little chatty for the first day...which was good for me, because I wanted them to share and participate.