For our first post of the new academic year, we asked PWC professor Melanie Fishbane, who teaches Writing in the Digital Age: Foundation course (and is therefore our resident blogging expert!), to reflect on the start of school through a teacher’s eyes.
Here’s a secret…teachers are just as excited and worried as students about the first day of school.
We think about first impressions, what we should wear so that we appear just the right amount of cool, and hope we have the perfect “first day of school” class planned so that our students will be excited about the next fifteen weeks together.
Teaching the Writing in the Digital Age: Foundation course I focus the first day on getting to know my students, their history, so we can write about the things that interest them the most. My “getting to know you” game asks students to describe their colleague in 140 characters (or less). The idea is to mimic either a Twitter profile or status update.
This year I discovered that our new group of students are diverse and creative, coming from all around the world to attend this program. There are many musicians among them, so many that we could form a PWC band – who knows, maybe they will…
Poetry, history and art majors, these students have decided to devote this year to their writing in order to discover how it will become part of their lives. It is a risk, one that I respect and hope to honour as we move forward into the new school year.
On behalf of everyone at the PWC program, welcome to our new students! May you use this opportunity to seek, explore and find your voice.
