Professionalism Points: Why I Hate the First Day of Class, Part 1

When I started teaching, I modeled a lot of my methods off of the classes that I had taken as an undergraduate. This worked well, for the most part. But semester after semester something sat uneasy with me. I hated the first day of classes. This feeling was in direct conflict with another feeling. I LOVE the first day of classes. My only conclusion? Something had gone horribly wrong.

So what was so terrible about the first day of classes? I like meeting the students. I really liked being up and lecturing again after a break. I liked all the people around, the chatter, the hum of the machinery of the school as everyone ran at maximum capacity. Adding students, adding classes, getting ready.

It took me a while, but I pinpointed my uneasiness to one specific event. The reading of the syllabus. Yeah. But what could I do about that? You HAVE to read through the syllabus. I mean, how else are students going to know your stance on everything from late work to cellphones. And oh crap, there it was. That was what I hated about the first day. “Rule time.” Each semester as I was reading over the guidelines for the class I was realizing that something about this whole exchange was damaging my relationship with the students and the general learning atmosphere in the classroom.

Now picture this. You sit in on a new class for the first time. You may, perhaps, even be a bit interested in what this class has to offer. (It happens, I swear.) The first thing you get from the teacher is a list of rules. Rules you may have never intended to break. Rules that cover everything from plagiarism to bathroom breaks. Then you think to yourself, ‘I remember this feeling, it’s called highschool’. But at that point it’s too late. The relationship has been established. I, the professor, am in charge and you, the student, are a troublemaker, a slacker, and apparently so disrespectful that I have to lay down the law fifteen minutes after we meet for the first time. Talk about damaging a working relationship.

What really did it for me though happened last summer. At the back of my classroom two students had laptops and they kept them open during class. And (wait for it) they did stuff on those computers. During class. While I was lecturing. Wow. I was torn. On the one hand, they could be taking notes, looking up additional information, increasing their productivity. On the other hand they could be battling demons in WoW or updating their facebook status (class is sooooo boring today!) It was a toss up. My instinct was to BAN ALL LAPTOPS. It was a strong one. Just like my “no cellphones” policy, it was designed to keep students’ attention on me. But there was a problem. I had a sneaking feeling that the students might be using those computers for learning.

There is a theory behind rule-day. If I keep students focused on me, and not distracted, and not distracting their classmates, then surely the classroom will turn into a learning mecca where students discover new things with me as their captain (then, just maybe they could reinact that scene from Dead Poets Society). But that doesn’t really work. What it DOES do is keep students eyes on me (sort of) and thus, my feelings remain intact and I don’t feel ignored or perhaps . . . shhhh . . . like I’m not that interesting. The other thing it does is foster a sort of hostility that students are better off without if they want to learn something today.

In the end, I kept my mouth shut about the laptops. But I kept thinking about them. All roads kept pointing to we-are-doing-it-wrong-ville. Technology and connectivity are a permanent part of our lives and our students lives. We all have phones. Many of us have laptops. That is not going to end when they graduate to the workforce. In fact, that’s really when it begins.

Part II coming soon “What I did about it.”

Tags: cellphone, class, classroom, laptop, learning, management, professionalism, syllabus, Teaching