As I prepare for the coming semester (only a few days off now) I find myself reflecting on the idea of teaching to and learning from freshman students. Last semester I was entirely closed off to learning from them. I had expectations of what students were and wanted and fired off a semester based entirely on assumption. I didn’t know what they wanted so much as I knew what I wanted and as a result I didn’t give them what they wanted so much as what I felt they needed. That has to change.
I’m starting the 101 conversation with an exploration of self and student. We will be doing a semester that culminates in the creation of Superheroes based on the zeitgeist. I want to start that with an exploration of who they are, what they like/love/dislike in their lives and what their focus is in terms of hero worship.
So, I’ve come through that storm of a semester to a point where I want to spend the first month learning from them what their needs, wants, and goals are. It starts with that day 1 assignment. Now that first assignment is the problem, because it becomes prescriptive. I dislike starting a semester with a prescriptive approach, because it instantly sets the tone of this being more of what they experienced in High School. In truth I prefer the gamification aspect of things, which argues that I should be playing a game on day one where the students figure out their own mini-profiles (Needs, Wants, Heroes, Goals) and then pair up with each other to form teams and those teams form a symbolic representation of those shared desires in terms of image and name and then produce that for the class and present it.
Yeah… That might be it.