What’s New? Introductions and first impressions matter. I put a lot of thought into the first activities of every new community of writers I work with because we have no time to waste and I want to begin as we will end – as writers. As I prepare to kick off the fifth Morehead Writing Project Online Summer Institute since I wrote this post I’m thinking about ways that I want to introduce myself to this cohort that are in touch with who I am now. As I have been journaling in #6words I could craft/assemble some sort of collection highlighting key aspects of who I am or important moments on my life journey. However, I am quite drawn to the idea of the #OneLittleWord and a theme poem especially as I have been doing the One Little Word for a while and so I have a nice collection that can really illustrate who I am. I love offering new community members choice for their introduction to our new community because I am always delighted by their innovation and creativity. How do you introduce yourself? How do you handcraft the icebreaker your community needs?
Original: As I note in Exploring Identity and Vulnerability, I changed things up for our introductions during the Morehead Writing Project’s Summer Institute this year. I gave the community a choice for creating an introduction – simply suggesting that they play with the introduction that they thought would be best for their particular teaching context in the coming year or simply a method they wanted to explore. At the time that I created the hyperdoc I used to support this process I fully intended to give my first-year writing students the same choice, but then I changed my mind.
One part of that decision was the result of the direction that I chose for my own introduction. I wanted to be creative and demonstrate who I am both superficially (my love of comics and superheroes) and beneath the surface (my flaws and hangups). As a teacher one of the things that I love about this introduction (the one that I shared with my first-year writing students), is that I make myself vulnerable by sharing pieces of myself – my fears, my worries, my burdens – with my students. Instructors who demand that their students expose themselves in class – their thoughts, their emotions, their failings – must be willing to do the same. I hope that baring a bit of my humanity will help students understand that I am not going to ask more from them than I ask from myself.
Another part of that decision was also inspired by my ever increasing love of hyperdocs (I really need to write a new blog post because my hyperdoc game is much improved). I have always believed in working smarter not harder (all evidence to the contrary) and try to make all my class activities serve double duty (or better). Transforming (translating?) more and more of my class activities into hyperdocs has made me really think long and hard about every activity and assignment so my classes are leaner and more focused. It was only after I crafted my own superhero story that I realized that having my students create their own superhero stories could provide a great jump-start to our later use of comics to have important conversations about life. An assignment that helps build community and supports later classwork? Done!
And so I asked my students to craft their own superhero stories. I shared my thought process and the varying approaches that I considered when crafting my superhero story (ie. exploring my childhood and past) before selecting my current approach (the four areas of my life causing the most stress). I also shared some superhero quizzes that I thought might be helpful to those not as deep into fandom as I am as well as some links to descriptions of the major universes. Then I challenged my students to use superheroes to tell us (the class community) more about themselves. I asked students to consider what they shared with the superhero(s) they chose: strengths and weaknesses, backgrounds, goals and aspirations, or simply role models.
What I got blew my socks off. Every single student stepped up and shared something really interesting and thoughtful. So many students shared details of their lives and opened themselves up to the community. I laughed. I cried. I learned things about superheroes and my students. It was truly an amazing beginning and I am so glad that I embraced superhero stories as a way to build our class community. And when we begin our comic themed work in earnest we have a tremendous resource to return to for inspiration. Now that is a win in my book.
I am sure that my #PLN has more great examples of ice breakers and community building activities that serve dual purposes and would love to share them here! How do you model open heart and open mind for your students?
Note: I no longer engage in this process with my undergraduates for several reasons. First and foremost, we have more time to grow together as a writing community. My first year writers write and share every class meeting and their first essays, especially for Writing I, are all about exploring personal identity. Student reflections note how close students feel to our community so I feel pretty good about that choice, but I’m not yet ready to let it go for the Summer Institute. However, one thing remains consistent across every class, or writing community, I lead – we build community by sharing our stories through writing and we share our authentic selves because I eschew disposable writing activities and assignments.
Image by Christoph Schütz from Pixabay
