#1. Community Building at the Start of the Term: Perspectives from an 1998 Issue of TETYC

First and foremost, I am a writing instructor before I am a researcher. A critical pedagogue at heart. To quote Ron Scapp from bell hooks' Teaching To Transgress, I strongly believe that "being a teacher is being with people" (p. 165). As the quality of course instruction relies on the sense of community that develops between classroom stakeholders, I always incorporate a few community building activities at the start of an academic term to strengthen stakeholder relationships. What could be a more appropriate first post for this project than the topic of new beginnings?

Spring quarter starts on March 30th at UC Davis and I am currently thinking of new community building ideas for the first few class meetings. A great resource that I have consulted for years is the "Instructional Note" genre from the Teaching English at the Two-Year College (TETYC) journal, which features pedagogical ideas like lessons, techniques, and strategies from instructors at community colleges across the U.S. While I am not currently teaching at a community college, I have found that the published activities easily translate to four-year university contexts. 

My collection of some recent TETYC issues.

Digging through the archives, I found an article from a 1998 issue of TETYC that touches exclusively on first-day activities. The article, titled "What Works For Me: First-Day Class Activities," showcases six first-day activities as described by different community college instructors. Interestingly enough, I was surprised that this article was not categorized as an "Instructional Note," however, as inferred from the submission guidelines listed on the TETYC website, it looks like the journal uses the terms "Instructional Note" and "What Works For Me" interchangeably. Looking through my newer issues of the journal, it seems that only the name "Instructional Note" is being used, so I am guessing perhaps that "What Works For Me" was the older branding for this particular genre. Regardless of the nomenclature, I am thinking about adapting two of these activities for my own classroom. 

The first activity of interest, by Stuart Barbier from Indiana University–Purdue University (after a quick Wikipedia search, it looks like this institution no longer goes by this name), first involves students taking five minutes journaling about the phrase "I write; therefore, I am," which Barbier has written on the board. Once five minutes are up, students are asked to exchange their notes with a classmate next to them and write a response to their classmates' thoughts. This step is repeated another time, and then students are prompted to discuss their ideas first in groups and then as a whole class. 

Props to Barbier for developing such a simple but engaging activity, and I was thinking about adapting this activity with a slight tweak. Instead of just one phrase, I thought it might be interesting to give students a number of phrases they could choose from. For example, drawing from Donald Murray's wisdom from his 1985 text, A Writer Teaches Writing, I could provide the following phrases from Murray's book and have students respond to the phrase that resonates with them the most: 1) "Writing is thinking," 2) "Writing is a process," or to keep Barbier's philosophical tone, 3) "Why write?" (1). This activity could also serve the purpose of providing instructors with a diagnostic sample of student writing that instructors might use to assess student needs before moving forward with the class.

The second activity that I want to adapt from this article is by Mary F. Stearns, from University of Cincinnati Clermont College, titled "The Me-Bag: Beyond the Ice Breaker in First-Year Composition." This activity involves students coming to class and engaging in a form of the classic "Show and Tell" activity from elementary school. Stearns explains that students need to prepare six to twelve items that represent "what they are, where they've been, and where they're going" to share to the class as a whole (p. 163). Stearns then mentions that the activity not only "shapes apprehensive students into a cohesive class," but that it also allows her to discern potential groupings of students for peer response (p. 163). 

This is an awesome activity and I appreciate Stearns for sharing this with the greater community, which includes me almost 30 years later. I would also maybe adapt this assignment for the digital age: First of all, instead of items, I may ask students to go to their smartphones and find images that depict who they are and what we as a classroom community should know about them. Once they locate their images, students can be prompted to go to a collective Google Slide deck, claim a slide, and paste their images to their slide for convenient presentation. Additionally, I also feel that six to twelve pictures might be excessive and that three might be a more comfortable number starting out, as students might not be comfortable sharing too much about themselves on the first day. 

Overall, this article offers excellent wisdom, and while I do not elaborate on them here, I would also recommend the activities proposed by the other featured instructors. Thank you for reading.

Notes  

(1) - These phrases are all subtitles from the first and second chapters of Murray's book. I am not sure why I chose Murray here, other than the fact 1) that his book is sitting next to me as I am writing this post, and 2) that as an expressivist, his work contains a lot of snappy aphorisms that are related to writing. I am sure that any quotes of this nature, regardless of the source, would suffice for this activity. 

References

hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

Murray, D. M. (1985). A writer teaches writing. Houghton Mifflin Company

Pearce, J. A., Bicki, N., Barbier, S., Schevera, N., Stearns, M., Bernstein, S. N., & Sheirer, J. (1998). What Works for Me: First-Day Class Activities. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 25(2), 161–165. https://doi.org/10.58680/tetyc19983858