Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
First Day of Classes

First Day of Classes

Last updated on: August 29, 2016 at 7:30 am by Vance Morgan

First Day of Classes 2016-08-29T07:30:55-04:00 Vance Morgan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Today is the first day of the semester at my college. I have been anticipating it even more than I usually do because I have been on sabbatical and have not been in the classroom since May 2015—my longest stretch away from school since the mid-1980s. Everyone has stories, many of them of the horror variety, about the first day of school—mine were full of cognitive and emotional dissonance from my earliest years. On the one hand, I couldn’t wait for school to start—I’ve loved just about everything about the life of learning ever since I can remember. On the other hand, there was all that non-learning stuff that I was not good at. Meeting new people. Sports. Leaving my mother and my dogs at home every morning. Riding the bus for a half hour each way. Come to think of it, I probably would have loved home schooling. I doubt my parents would have.

For a college professor, the first day of the semester requires answering an eternal question—what to do with students whom you have never met, who are coming off either summer or Christmas vacation, who probably just met their roommate and hate her or him, who might have spent the previous night getting in a final party before attempting to get serious about their education for at least a week or so, and who are assuming that all we are going to do during our first class meeting is go over the syllabus and leave early? I have some professor colleagues who, assuming that all the above is true, descend to their new students’ expectations and dismiss class after a brief overview of the syllabus and the upcoming semester. I am not one of those professors. At the beginning of the first day of school, I give a reading quiz.

This, of course, means that my students have a reading assignment that they are required to complete for our first meeting of the semester. This is easy enough to arrange—I have the class roster available several weeks before the semester begins, so a simple email, followed by at least a dozen reminders in the following days before the semester begins, provides my students-to-be with the course syllabus, other pertinent data, and the first day’s reading assignment (with the promise of a quiz). I often notice a drop of five or six students in my class roster in the day or two after sending this email, which is a good thing (see below). I usually receive a bit of email pushback from my students-to-be (“My other classes aren’t requiring a reading or having a quiz on the first day”), so why do I do this? For a number of reasons.

One advantage, as noted earlier, is roster control. Unfortunately, because my classes tend to fill up quickly and are often of the core curriculum variety that students have to take, every student who leaves my roster for a more palatable first day experience is immediately replaced by someone else (who doesn’t necessarily know about the first day reading and quiz—hence the multiple email reminders).
The amount of classroom time I have in a given semester with my students is limited. This semester we meet for seventy-five minutes twice per week for a total of twenty-seven meetings. Throwing away the first of those meetings sends the message that either our time together is unlimited or that it isn’t important enough to squeeze value out of every scheduled moment. Neither of these is true.
Many of my courses (half of them this semester) are filled exclusively with freshmen. Nothing says “this isn’t high school or Kansas anymore” to a first-week college student than for them to hit the ground running—hard.

I’m happy to report that in the interdisciplinary course I teach in every fall, my teammates have been happy to join me in assigning significant work for the first class. Two years ago, my colleague and I assigned the entire Iliad for freshman summer reading, building on it through the first two weeks of the semester. The first meeting of this year’s interdisciplinary course freshmen met today—my colleagues and I assigned fifty pages or so and gave a quiz. Amazingly, everyone survived. It’s amazing what you can get freshmen to do without complaining.

Other than making the first day of school a difficult one for my students, what really am I up to as I return to the classroom this week? I reflected on this just before as my sabbatical began sixteen months ago; as I get back into the teaching saddle I return to what I was thinking then. As a professor, I am a facilitator of lifetime learning, a person who points students in fruitful directions, helping them identify and become skillful in the use of tools that will help them construct their own moral frameworks intelligently. The liberally educated lifetime learner is equipped both to seek and create meaning throughout her life. I take pride in playing a part in this process. I have thought a lot over the past twenty-five years about the day-to-day dynamic between professor and student; I continually return to the difference between an idol and an icon.

Idols and Icons

The point of a professor is to be Virgil to the student’s Dante, guiding the educational journey, relying on knowledge and experience to point out the pitfalls and attractions of a journey that each person must encounter individually. The professor helps the student learn to identify what is important and what is not in the perpetual sifting process of education. The professor is not the main attraction at any point in this process. The professor is an icon—something to look through or past, in other words—rather than an idol—something to look at. There is a reason that the Second Commandment is a prohibition against idolatry. Human beings are inveterate idolaters, more than happy to pattern themselves after someone or something else rather than to take on responsibility for themselves. For those who are interested in creatively addressing the undoubtedly real shift in higher education toward preparation for a good job and financial success that has been going on for a while now, I highly recommend iconography.

books

Development of Western Civilization

Development of Western Civilization

Previous Post

August 26, 2016

They Will Never Take Our Freedom

Next Post

August 31, 2016 The Joyful Owl

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Advent AI Angels Artificial intelligence atheism attention baptism Baptists beauty belief Benedictines Bible bicycling Big Bird books Bovina Camaldoli hermitage Canada Catholicism cats certainty change Christianity Christmas Collegeville Covid-19 creativity Development of Western Civilization dogs doubt Easter Enneagram Epiphany Episcopal ethics Eucharist evil extroverts Facebook faith family fear flowers forgiveness freedom friends God goodness grace happiness heaven hell history Holy Spirit Holy Week hope human nature humility humor idolatry incarnation introverts irreverence Islam Jeanne Jesus Joe Biden joy Judaism justice Kamala Harris knowledge Lent listen literature liturgy love Marsue Memorial Day miracles movies music mystery mythology NPR Old Testament optimism paradox peace Penguins philosophy piano podcast politics power prayer Protestantism Providence College Religion Rhode Island sabbatical sacrament science seeing silence Simone Weil Socrates soul sports St. John's College stories suffering tattoo teaching technology television theology thinking time tolerance transcendence travel trees trust truth Uncategorized Vermont wisdom wonder writing

Select a Month May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz