Unlock Student Buy-In: How to Build an Engaged Classroom Right from the Start
Use First Impression Psychology to Your Advantage
We already passed Lenny Kravitz’s point of reference in the song “Five More Days Till Summer.” Independence Day is gone. The first day of school is around the corner.
Summer sand slides through the hourglass at a faster rate than other times. Don’t believe me? Ask any teacher.
Before Summer slips away, close your eyes, clear your mind, and visualize your first day of school in the classroom. What first impression are you building? Thinking about this now pays dividends throughout the school year.
First Impression Psychology–We All Display It
Students’ perception of you will affect how they feel about learning in your class. When they first meet you, they pay attention to how you look, act, and talk. They form opinions based on it all. At the same time, they likely want to be somewhere else at that point.
Don’t worry, you also walk this walk.
To kick off the school year, your school administration probably books a guest speaker to motivate the faculty. You’ll scan the topic, wonder about the guest’s street cred, and feel a pack mentality to not let yourself be easily impressed. Admit it, you’d rather spend those valuable minutes somewhere else, like preparing your classroom.
Unlike a brief connection with a guest speaker, you’re looking to connect with your students for nine months. Plan for it.
First Impression Psychology–Use It to Your Advantage
First impressions are strong and stay with us for a long time, even if they're not always right.
You can’t control students’ past experiences, hidden biases, and other things happening in their lives. Still, understanding the psychology behind first impressions helps. We see how these impressions affect individual student’s thinking about the world and their attitude in the classroom.
When students enter your classroom for the first time, their brains will quickly process lots of information. This will affect how they see and interact with others.
Your students will exist on a figurative scale ranging from excited to be back all the way to acting like school is, like, the dumbest thing ever.
Where will you fit on that scale? More to the point: what are you doing to unlock their buy-in to learning in your classroom?
Plan Now for Day One Excellence
Nail the small stuff. Be sure you know how much (or how little) time you get with your classes on Day One. Reach out to your administration. Ask for a copy of the irregular schedules so common during the first week of school. This will help shape your planning.
Plan to accomplish one memorable thing and execute it well. This could be getting to know faces and names, creating one piece of content, or just about anything outside their expectations. I will go into detailed examples in a companion post.
Avoid Normal Above All Else
Nothing against most of your colleagues, but students will walk into plenty of Day One classrooms to a friendly face, neatly arranged desks, and hear “WELCOME TO SUCH-AND-SUCH CLASS, I’M SO-AND-SO AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A WONDERFUL YEAR!”
Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t assign seats, call the roll, or hand out a sheet of classroom expectations for parental signature. And, let me emphasize, DON’T distribute a syllabus or any Day One homework. Those can wait till tomorrow. You’re already a nerd in their eyes. Don’t exacerbate it.
If you’d like help brainstorming Day One moments or other kinds of planning, read these companion posts.
For now, think through how first impression psychology can help you plan Day One.
You can also drop me a line.