New Sections

In the Upper School, we'll all have a new group of students next week. There are advantages and disadvantages to mixing things up in this way, but a clear consequence is that teachers need to re-establish class expectations, just like we did in September. As Ellen never fails to mention, these first two weeks are an important window. It's always easier to start off a bit strict. I have concluded over the years that students like a bit of rigor in the classroom. It lets them feel that they are stepping up to something, instead of just carrying on in a comfortable slouchy way. It's a balance, of course. You want your classroom to be somewhere your students enjoy being.

I was reviewing the files that Heather created last year and came across a number of ideas for working with new students. Daniel sometimes groups the students in a few different configurations on the first day so that the class has seating options during the quint: students arrange themselves alphabetically by first name, alphabetically by last name and also in the order of their birthdays. During the first few days of class, Tim sometimes does a version of Two Truths and a Lie: students write down on an index card two facts about themselves and a falsehood. These can be read aloud and guessed at, several right away and the rest from time to time during the quint. I think I will avail myself of Scott's "Find Someone Who" idea: I will distribute index cards with names of figures we have studied written on them and have students find a partner whose figure is linked to their own: Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, for example, or Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas. The pairs of students can then explain the connection. This enables us to do a warm-up while also reviewing the year so far. For me, it makes more sense to do this mixer on the second day of class. For one thing, the content of the curriculum is serious at the beginning of Quint III and the tone of our first meeting needs to reflect this. Secondly, having a focused and business-like first day is one of the ways I implement Ellen's September reminder about setting expectations. I find the energy at school tends to be high and loose enough on the first day without my doing anything to stir it up.