First Day of Class

Falling in Love: An Icebreaker

Even after almost 25 years of teaching, one task I still approach with new-teacher determination is finding an effective icebreaker to kick off a semester. Every summer, I scour the internet with the goal of finding a non-cliched, community-building, invigorating activity that I can wow

Read More »

Flip the First Day

It’s almost impossible to read blogs, articles, even books on teaching without seeing a multitude of suggestions for not “wasting” the first day of class by covering the syllabus, course schedule, class rules and routines, and the like. I’ve even written one myself (Brown, 2009).

Read More »
making connections in teaching

Making Connections in Teaching

As teaching professors, we know first-hand how complex an endeavor teaching is. The sheer number of instructional interactions, decisions, and processes can be overwhelming to enact, much less to master. To streamline such complexity, I have adopted what I consider a beneficial perspective. In its

Read More »
Four puzzle pieces

Four Things to Do on the First Day of Class

First impressions are important and you can make favorable ones on the first day of class by doing things just a bit out of the ordinary. Here are some ideas.

  1. If it’s a course where students don’t think they know anything about the
Read More »
participation policies for college classroom

Participation Policy Examples

Here’s a collection of five different participation policies. I encourage you to use them to stimulate thinking and conversations about how a participation policy’s content and tone can influence learning and classroom climate. Which policies work best—given the course, its content, the instructor, and the

Read More »
Archives
The 2025 Teaching Professor Conference

Get the Latest Updates

Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter

TPCAI