Start the School Year Differently

On Monday morning, I returned to faculty meetings to begin the school year for the 8th time in my career. With that many opening meetings, I've noticed a fascinating trend: there's legitimate excitement and energy in the room and it always disappears entirely when the first administrator comes up to talk about operating procedures like discipline, honor code, scheduling and grading policy. Upon seeing it an 8th time, I had an epiphany; this is exactly how my first class goes when I force students to go through the course syllabus together.

I have always been told and I have always taught that teachers should embrace energy and excitement and harness it for learning and retention. So why would we start our school year with something that everyone would agree is not a best practice for teaching and learning?

So this year I'm going to purposefully leave out all administrative "stuff" (rules, course content, grading policies, etc.) from the first day. Instead, I'm going to host an activity where students have to think of what they want out of the class. I'll frame the course as broadly as possible and let the students talk about what they want to learn within that broad scope.

For example, in my Contemporary World History class this year, I'm going to post a map of the world, with the US taken out, and tell them that this is your playing field for learning this year. Anything that fits within that framework fits within the course content of "Contemporary World History." Imagine that blank slate for learning. I'm excited to see what the students come up with!

Here are some other questions I'm thinking about asking on day 1:

• 1) In general, what are you excited about for this school year? Why?
• 2) In general, what challenges do you think you'll face this year?
• 3) What did you learn this summer? How does that fit into the broad framework of this course?
• 3A) How will your other interests and/or previous knowledge help you to learn in this course?
• 4) What do you want to learn within the broad framework I provided for this course?  
• 5) Finally, how do you think I should go about teaching this subject in a way that will 1) make it relatable 2) keep you interested and 3) benefit retention and 4) enhance future pursuits