8 Things NOT to Forget Your First Day of Class
Even for seasoned teachers, the first day of class is always new. New students, new classrooms, new textbooks, new adventures, and new opportunities await you. In the nervousness, the excitement, the chaos, it’s far too easy to walk away after the first class thinking, “Oh, I can’t believe I forgot that!” It happens to all of us, but whether it’s your first first day or your hundredth, hopefully this list will help you not forget anything!
Introduce yourself. I don’t mean, “Hi, I’m Megan. I’m from America.” I mean, really let them get to know you. Take a few minutes and just talk with them. Tell them about your flight here or what your hobbies are. Tell them an awkward story about you learning a language so they don’t feel so alone. Show them some pictures of your family or your dog or hometown. Just let them listen to your voice and get used to it. Let them see your personality, and give them something to talk with you about in the break or after class. Say whatever you want—just make it friendly and simple.
Give them your WeChat, phone number, or email.You can give them all three, or whatever you feel most comfortable with. WeChat is an absolute necessity in China. I’ve found a lot of teachers don’t give out their contact information, and when I do give it out, many of my students are touched that I care about communicating with them. And of course, it has its practical purposes too. If a student is going to be late, he can text you, and if he’s completely confused about what you said in class, he can conveniently ask after class.
Get their WeChats. Doing this the first day of the semester has SAVED ME. First, this is a great tool for helping remember the names of your students. As hard as you try to remember every student’s name the first day, you’re going to forget a few. Be sure to remind them to include their English names when they add you as a friend so you can change their name in your contact list. That night, use profile pictures and posted selfies to help jog your memory and connect the name to the face. Another reason to get their WeChats is so you can invest in them. Like their posts, ask them about their weekends, send a quick text telling them they did a great job in class.
Start a WeChat group. Now that you’ve added their WeChats, make a different WeChat group for each class you’re teaching. This allows you to send reminders about upcoming assignments, give encouragement, or update the class about any changes in class schedule or location. And, when you forget to assign homework one day (which will definitely happen), you always have the option to send the assignment over WeChat.
Find out who the class monitor is.The class monitor (班长ban1 zhang3) is an integral part of the Chinese education system. As a foreigner, you will mostly likely find yourself out of the loop on schedule changes or school announcements. Your class monitor is your connection to administration. His job is to be in charge of his class and assist teachers. If you have questions or need small tasks done, you can go to him for help.
Ask for the class roster. In my experience, it usually takes asking more than once to actually get the roster from your class monitor. Your monitor might have to go to the school to request a copy for you, and due to the hierarchy of people he’ll have to talk to and how busy everyone is, he might need to be reminded. The sooner you ask, the sooner you’ll get it. And, if you ask the first day, there might be a chance he has it with him.
Hear everyone’s name.You might not be able to remember them all, but you should at least hear everyone’s name once. How you choose to do this is up to you. You could call role, have each student stand and say his name, walk around the class and personally meet each student, play a game, or have each student give a short speech introducing himself. From the very first day, let every student know he is valuable and seen. This will also help you learn their names that much faster.
Make sure you have the right book.Sounds ridiculous, I know. But on more than one occasion, I have held up my blue book on the first day saying, “Okay, this is our textbook for this semester.” And the students will simultaneously raise up their red textbooks and say, “No, teacher. This one is.” Maybe the school mistakenly gave you the older edition, or someone grabbed a book off of the wrong pile. Either way, if you have the wrong book, you want to know about it before you’ve planned a month’s worth of lessons.
In order to not forget, I usually add each of these things into my lesson plan. Now, forgetting any of these won’t be the end of the world, but using this list will help you start of your semester two steps ahead of the game!