Day 1: First Impressions

The first day of the semester is always a big day, one filled with hope, excitement, a healthy degree of nervousness. I have 75 minutes to create a welcoming environment, to get students talking and writing, to talk about writing and students' own expectations about this course, to give an overview of the course, the things we will do and learn, the objectives, why they're here.

I have seven seconds to establish their first impression of me and about seven minutes for that first impression to develop into their initial estimation of what this course will be like.

The stakes are high: I am to make them comfortable, yet I also must warn them that this is a rigorous course, one that will require complete dedication on their part. They must stay on track; it is too easy to get overwhelmed, to fall behind, to resent the course altogether. Yet at the same time, I must create a safe, productive learning environment, one in which they will feel supported and seen. And I must do all of this in the context of a required course that most of them not only resent having to take, largely because the course is oriented around teaching them how to do what they believe they already know how to do: think and write.

How do I sell them on this course? How do I generate excitement, or, at the very least, how do I convince them that taking this course is a worthwhile endeavor? How do I explain to them that the abstract goals of the course--learning how to think critically, how to ask the right questions, how to approach and interpret complex ideas, how to interrogate their own assumptions and synthesize what they know with what they learn--are intertwined with the concrete one that they are most interested in: improving their writing?

To be continued...