No Syllabus Necessary!

I just read one of Geoffrey Greer's blog postings titled, "End Totalitarian Teaching" and completely agreed with him!  He talks about the age old technique of boring students to death during the first day of school. 

I started my first year the same way. I handed out a syllabus and reviewed everything we were going to do for the year.  Heck - I didn't know better - I was told to do that!

I learned very quickly how much that alienated the students because I saw from the start that they were tuning me out.

The problem is that student teachers rarely get to start a new year to evaluate a cooperating teacher's strategy.  So, when they have to start the year, they tend to fall back on how their college professors started their courses.  Unfortunately, it doesn't translate well to high school students.

In our DVD we talk about a course expectation sheet.  Explain to the students how things work in your room.  You don't need a lot of rules - you need to emphasize respect because it is the umbrella under which all proper behavior resides.

We even suggest breaking up the expectation sheet over a few days.  That way you can get the students immediately working on their first assignments.  I always made mine a short reading test (high interest) and writing sample.  That way I knew within the first few days if I had students misplaced in my class. 

Rethink your first day strategy if you are doing all the talking and the students aren't busy!