On the first day of school last year, I tried an idea inspired by Parker J. Palmer’s book Courage to Teach, which I absolutely recommend. 

Courage to Teach is largely about bringing our authentic selves to the classroom. We can’t really develop trusting relationships with students if we don’t allow them to know us. We need to be ourselves so they can see us as someone they know and trust. We ask our students to bring their real selves to school, too. In that way, we meet our students at an intersection, bringing along all of our individual backgrounds and preparing to go on a journey together. That’s the idea behind this community-building activity.

When my students arrived in the classroom on the first day, I drew an intersection on the whiteboard – just four inverted corners. I wrote “At This Intersection” across the top and then explained the concept to the class: All of us, here, in this moment, are meeting at the intersection of this classroom. But the reality is that we’re not coming alone. We are bringing so many other “things” with us. I asked them, “What else is in the room with us today? What are we bringing?” I started by acknowledging that we were bringing our identities as teacher and students (adding those labels to the board), and then I invited them to share the various identities and emotions they were bringing. Together, we brainstormed and added notes to the intersection, and the students started to open up as they began to realize, “Oh, I’m not alone.” 

On the first day of school, I think most students share similar feelings of anxiety and trepidation about being in a room with 30 people they may not know. But once a few students opened up, we hit the ground running. I told them, “Hey, it’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling right now. This is a brand-new experience. You don’t know me, I don’t know you and you may not know other people in this room – and there’s a lot of anxiety that comes along with that.” Often, the things we are most afraid of are the things we don’t know about, so sharing takes the edge off their nervousness.

Once we had our intersection filled in, I pointed out that this moment is special, because we’ll never have another moment exactly like this, with this exact makeup of people meeting for the first time, with everybody bringing these exact things to the classroom. It’s powerful to acknowledge just where we all are at this moment, as we start the year together. As the year goes on, we get to watch how we each change and grow from there.  

This is my 22nd year in the classroom, and every year I’ve seen that relationships are pivotal to success in the classroom. For me, the whole process is about empowering the students, helping them make choices, helping them see that they have choices to make and encouraging that as much as possible. When we take time to let students know how much we care about them – and that our investment in them goes beyond just the curriculum that we’re dealing with day to day – we see amazing results. 

The framework of the classroom is very much a social experience. And every individual in the classroom brings different experiences, a different background and different connections to the group. Acknowledging the coming together of all of those unique identities was so powerful that I’m now starting every year this way.