Every good teacher knows that learning doesn’t happen in isolation. Creating a learning community gives students a sense of security, study pals, and somebody to double-check with about assignments. While once upon a time classrooms were largely homogenous, filled with young white males who shared many of the same real-life experiences, these days most classrooms can, at first glance, seem to be a wild cacophony of humanity, tender and tough, curious and hostile, open-minded and most definitely, absolutely closed.

Here’s the question: How do you get them to connect? How do you get them to feel safe enough to express ideas in front of such a varied group, listen to one another’s ideas, engage in authentic dialogue, and push their own academic, social, and personal limits in order to grow?

From the moment the class passed the threshold, I feared this was one pot of stew that was never going to mingle flavors. It wasn’t just that there were a number of different “types,” it was that already, 43 seconds into class, an invisible but palpable distrust was rumbling just below the pitch of human hearing. However, it was not below the pitch of teacher hearing, and it filled me with fear. I had Goths and girlie-girls, straight-shooters and loose cannons, bookworms, and back-row mutterers. I had a guy proudly sporting a spaghetti stained chef’s hat, and another proudly displaying a bald and vibrantly tattooed skull, and they were glaring at each other.

I opened my mouth to say, “Class dismissed.” Fortunately, my inner administrator reminded me that if I dismissed them before the first class had even started, I would lose my job. My mouth has a mind of its own (often not a good thing) and instead, I said, “Let’s dump the desks.”

“Huh?” the class sang in unison. A good sign. Unison.

“Shove them out of the way and make two circles facing each other.”

“Huh?” they sang again.

“You with the gorgeously tattooed skull, you’re in charge. Make them do it!”

He glared. They scrambled. It was done.

The circles formed, the inner circle facing the outer one. They looked almost ready for some spontaneous folk-dancing.

“Inner circle: You’ve got one minute to pry out as much interesting information from the person you are facing as you possibly can. Skip the boring stuff parents ask their kids’ dates. Ask what they’re afraid of, if they’ve ever been lost, or what makes them laugh hysterically.”

“Ummm,” a girlie-girl trilled, “Like, what are we supposed to be doing?”

“You are speed dating,” I said. She perked up immediately, as did several of the older returning students who probably hadn’t dated in a while. “When I flick the lights, everyone absolutely stop talking—even if you’re in the middle of a word. When I flick them again, outer circle has one minute to ask questions. After your two minutes are up, inner circle steps to the left, outer circle stays put, and do it again. Go!”

“Are you crazy?” my inner administrator said. I didn’t bother to answer. The room became a concert hall filled with glorious word-music—murmurs and mutters, giggles and snorts, the rapid gallop of syllables leaping atop one another, all rising to a beautiful crescendo…

I flicked the lights.

Silence.

I flicked again.

Words. Conversations. Eye contact. Here and there, a hand reached out to touch a shoulder, mouths slipped from crescent-moon grins to open laughter.

And thus it went. Round and round the room they probed and questioned and probably overstepped bounds, but nobody complained so I let them be. When everybody had finally met everyone else and it was time to sit down, I saw several students grab their bags and books and slip next to someone from a completely different group. We reviewed policies and talked about my grading system, and they actually listened. But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was when the chef-hat guy and the tattooed skull guy left class together, their charmingly ridiculous heads tipped, chuckling over who-knows-what.

Dr. Cynde Gregory teaches composition and literature at Gwinnett Technical College in Georgia in addition to tutoring second language learners of all ages.

Best and Worst Classes – I love this quick and easy activity. On one section of the blackboard I write: “The best class I’ve ever had” and underneath it “What the teacher did” and below that “What the students did.” On another section I write “The worst class I’ve ever had” (well, actually I write, “The class from hell”) and then the same two items beneath. I ask students to share their experiences, without naming the course, department or teacher, and I begin filling in the grid based on what they call out. If there’s a lull or not many comments about what the students did in these classes, I add some descriptors based on my experience with some of my best and worst classes. In 10 minutes or less, two very different class portraits emerge. I move to the best class section of the board and tell students that this is the class I want to teach, but I can’t do it alone. Together we have the power to make this one of those “best class” experiences.

First Day Graffiti – This is an adaptation of an activity proposed by Barbara Goza in the Journal of Management Education in 1993. Flip charts with markers beneath are placed around the classroom. Each chart has a different sentence stem. Here are a few examples:

“I learn best in classes where the teacher ___”
“Students in courses help me learn when they ___”
“I am most likely to participate in classes when ___”
“Here’s something that makes it hard to learn in a course: ___”
“Here’s something that makes it easy to learn in a course: ___”

Students are invited to walk around the room and write responses, chatting with each other and the teacher as they do. After there are comments on every flip chart, the teacher walks to each one and talks a bit about one or two of the responses. If you run out of time, you can conduct the debriefing during the next session.

Syllabus Speed Dating – Karen Eifler, an education professor at the University of Portland, designed this activity. Two rows of chairs face each other (multiple rows of two can be used in larger classes). Students sit across from each other, each with a copy of the syllabus that they’ve briefly reviewed. Eifler asks two questions: one about something in the syllabus and one of a more personal nature. The pair has a short period of time to answer both questions. Eifler checks to make sure the syllabus question has been answered correctly. Then students in one of the rows move down one seat and Eifler asks the new pair two different questions. Not only does this activity get students acquainted with each other, it’s a great way to get them reading the syllabus and finding out for themselves what they need to know about the course.

Irritating Behaviors: Theirs and Ours – This activity grows out of research done by D. Appleton in 1990 (The Journal of Staff, Program and Organizational Development). His findings are a bit dated now, but the idea is not. Appleton asked students to list faculty behaviors that most irritate them. He had faculty do the same for student behaviors. I’d put students in groups and have them respond to a slightly different question: “What are the five things faculty do that make learning hard?” Or, asked positively, “What are the five things faculty do that make it easy to learn?” Collect the lists and make a master list to share in class or online. Below the five things faculty do, you can also list the five things students do that make it hard or easy to teach. The follow-up conversation is about how the teacher and students can each commit to not doing what appears on their respective “hard” list and have a better class experience as a result.

Do you have a favorite activity that you like to use on the first day of class? Please share in the comment box.

Interesting things begin to happen here, and I can make some immediate points about classroom expectations. Students sitting in the back of the room have not been able to see the items on the table. The point? Sit as close to the front of the room as possible. Some students have been engaged in conversations and did not see me or the box. The point? Pay attention right from the beginning of the class; professors often offer the most interesting and important information at the beginning and ending of class. Some students come in late. The point? Arrive on time. Some students don’t have anything to write with or on. The point? Come prepared. We discuss all this with humor, but the inferences are clear.

Now that I have everyone’s attention, I repeat the process, slowly taking each item out one by one, placing it on the table, then returning them all to the box and asking students to list as many as they can remember. As expected, everyone lists more the second time around. The obvious advantage of paying attention is illustrated. We notice that the most frequently remembered items are those that came out first and last, so we talk about the advantages of studying in shorter stints rather than in marathon sessions. Before proceeding, they determine how many items are in the box by sharing their lists with each other and pooling the items.

When the exercise is repeated yet again, everyone gets even more of the items. This time we talk about each item as it is taken out and put back. This, too, aids their ability to recall, because using another of the five senses is an important technique for remembering the contents. Through this process we note similarities to learning any kind of content: simple repetition helps; verbalizing material they are trying to master helps; noting the total range of material helps when they are learning it in smaller chunks; talking about it with others helps. All this is, of course, fundamentally obvious, but isn’t the obvious what we often miss?

The assignment for the next class is to find a way to remember all of the box’s contents. Foolish? Unrelated to actual course content? Maybe, maybe not. To many students, the material they are required to learn for basic psychology or biology or history can seem as disconnected and random as the items in the box, and yet they must find ways to place it in a context, make it relevant, and retain it. When they come to the second class, many have somehow managed to remember the 15 or so items. And all have improved their recall from the first class.

We discuss their methods for mastering the contents. Some have grouped them alphabetically; some, by color; some, by use, e.g., grooming items, desk items, toy items; and some have created a narrative. The number of approaches they devise is always astonishing, and they love to share and hear how everyone else has accomplished the task. They capture so much from these discussions that at any point during the semester I can ask, “Anyone still able to list all the items in the box?” and most can. So, yes, this is an excellent first-day-of-class icebreaker: it clearly gives everyone in the room a common focus in a nonthreatening way. Its benefits, however, go way beyond that to real conversations about how to learn in this new, strange academic environment.

Virginia Freed, MEd, MA, is a Professor of English at Bay Path College.

Excerpted from Thinking Outside of the Box, The Teaching Professor, October 2008.