Hospitality in the Classroom—Part III: Modeling the Practice

The following excerpts of David’s upcoming book, Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach: Reflections on Education as Transformation through Dialogue (Summer, 2014), are used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

In this post I will provide a number of the specific ways I have personally tried to answer:  “How can I create an atmosphere where people were free to speak and learn without being anxious or fearful?” These practices may seem obvious, but they go far to create a classroom culture where learning can affectively occur.

First, I try to arrive before the students do.

I know faculty who rush into the room at the last minute or a few minutes late, with an armful of books. They quickly shuffle their papers into some order and then go right into teaching. I do not think that creates the best atmosphere for learning. Often I will come early in order to arrange the chairs and tables in the room to my satisfaction. I will get my papers out and ready for teaching. Then I just walk among the students as they arrive, greeting them, talking with them and asking how they are doing. On the first day of class, I will shake hands with them as they enter the classroom. I will often thank them for signing up for the class and tell them I look forward to being together with them. I, as a teacher, am genuinely grateful that they are there, and I want them to know that. Lately, I have taken to welcoming students with a greeting and handshake before every class.

If on a first day I have not met them before, I will learn something about them—where they are from or what program they are in. After the class has been going for some weeks, I may use this time to ask someone how they are feeling (if they have been sick) or how their family is (if I am aware that they have had a crisis). Sometimes I will be able to take a student aside at this time before class and forewarn them confidentially that they did not do so well on a paper I am about to return to them and inviting them to talk with me about it later if they would like. I also linger after each class as a means to make myself available.

From the beginning of the course, I assume that my relationship with individual students will last through the semester and beyond. I would welcome people to my home in this way. Why not to the classroom?

Second, I try to begin on time and end on time.

This seems to me to be a matter of basic respect. If some students are late, I do not wait for them. This would penalize students who come on time, and it would teach people that if they come late they will not miss anything. At the same time, I am glad to see students even when they arrive late—and often there are very good reasons why people are late. I just start on time without making a point of it. Many of the students have made great sacrifices to be in school. And some have traveled a good distance on that day to be there. So I feel that I owe it to the students to fill all the class time with good learning experiences.

And I try to end on time. Despite my best efforts, I sometimes find in myself an urge to just keep on making that important point at the end of class, even if it means the students must stay a few minutes longer. But this is not respectful. Besides, at this point, they are giving signals by putting away notebooks and zipping up backpacks. So what are they learning?

I used to wait until the last few minutes of the class period to go over the assignment for the next class. Invariably, there was not time to explain it well and not time to field questions for clarification. So I would go past the end of the class. Now, I give the assignment for the next class period at the beginning of the class or midway through after a break. This way I can be sure that the assignment is clear, that the students have had time to ask questions about it, and that I will not go past the ending time of the class.

Going beyond the end of class is fundamentally a matter of taking myself and my subject too seriously. There is seldom anything so important that it cannot be interrupted or wait until the next time. Otherwise, it is just a matter of poor planning on my part that is thoughtless and inconsiderate.

Third, as an expression of hospitality, I get to know their names.

I know a few faculty who at the end of the semester with a class of ten students or so still did not know the names of their students. I need to be very intentional about learning student names, but it seems well worth the effort.

Right after registration, before the class begins, I request the class list and I begin to memorize it. If there is a photo directory, I correlate the names with the pictures and practice them. Then when I arrive at the first class period, I already know the names, and I can begin to correlate the names and photos with real people. I repeat their names in my mind as I meet them. I usually find some reason to have them talk in pairs during the first class; and while they are talking with each other, I will take the list and practice the names in my head.

This learning of names on my part is helped also by the fact that I lead students through a process that will enable them to know each other’s names as well. Knowledge is power, and if the teacher is the only one who has a class list, then students are placed at a decided disadvantage. If they were guests in my home, I would spend a considerable amount of time introducing the guests to each other. So, all students get a class list with the names of all the students.

Often, in the first class, I will spend time letting each student introduce herself or himself to the class with a comment of some kind on their part. Then I will stop every few minutes and see if the students could recall the names of the last six or so students who have introduced themselves—without at first consulting their class list. This gives a chance for them to practice the names. I have the students work briefly in pairs to try and recall the names, so that, as paired partners, they will begin to get to know at least one other person well.

The point is that the classroom provides a wonderful opportunity to build community. Learning should be a social event. People should come to class to be with their friends and to talk with them about things that matter to them. So the class is a chance to get to know people better and to make new friends. I make sure they get in small groups with different people on a regular basis in each three-hour class period, so they can learn from new voices. I have often had students say on their evaluations of a class: “I learned as much from other students as I learned from the teacher.” Learning the names in the first class period is a message—that the relationships among the students matter and that they will be learning partners.

As a matter of hospitality, communicate with students between classes.

Of course when I see them outside of class, I greet them, and I often ask how the class is going for them. But I also e-mail them. I confess that I have done very little to incorporate technology into the classroom or to use the internet site provided by our seminary to foster communication with and among students. I believe everyone would be well-served by that process; and many of my colleagues use it to great benefit.

Nevertheless, what I have managed to do is to prepare a distribution list on my PC of all the students in each class. I will send an e-mail to them before the course begins, welcoming them and saying how much I look forward to the class. Then after each of the weekly classes, I will send an e-mail message telling them how much I appreciated the class, their enthusiastic participation, some conversation that was especially meaningful, or something else that I genuinely enjoyed about the last class. I usually also include a copy of the assignments for the next class as a reminder and as an anticipation of some things we might be doing then. I do this a day or two after most classes.

The message is brief and takes little time to share. But it makes clear to the students my own experience of the class and the fact that I am thinking about them beyond the scheduled time. I realize that for some students this is just one more e-mail to open. But for others students, the brief message is an important connection with me, with the class, and with the subject matter. And occasionally I get a response back posing a question or telling me how much the class meant to them.

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