My First Class by Cristina A. Garcia

My first class

By Cristina A. Garcia

EDCI 4322 Human Development & Instruction

Summer 2008

My experience on the first day of class was a little unexpected. I was looking forward to lecture and notes, but we actually did something that was quite fun. As college students, we usually go into class not knowing a single person and leaving that class feeling the same way. Our teachers usually ask us to introduce ourselves to one person, if possible, and maybe get their numbers for future assistance in the class.

Once, our professor started speaking about finding soul mates and so forth, I felt a little at ease. Let me explain, she wanted us to introduce ourselves to 3 other students and give them a little information on our background, pet peeves, academics, personality, and learning styles. We then had to choose from our students what we felt was our soul mate from our choice of 3. In my disbelief, I ended up feeling relatively similar to our professor, and we both wanted the same ultimate goal, which was to open up a school of our own. We then began listening to others and their soul mates. Throughout the class we found ourselves learning about each other without even expecting too.

But we were in for a surprise, once we had our break we came back to a room that was totally transformed, our chairs were all in a circle facing each other. We then learned that we were going to play a game that was titled The Name Game. Our professor spoke to us about what we were to do and began the game. Students were supposed to come up with a creative word that would help remind other students about their names. Several students had some interesting choices; I recall a girl named Margarita who chose Happy Hour as her words, another student chose Erika in America. All students had words that rhymed and made it a humorous game. We all had a great time and no one seemed to have any difficulty.

In future references I feel this is something that is fun but educational for teachers to use with their students. It made us feel less tense and made it a great ice-breaking activity which we all enjoyed very much. Now I know my fellow colleagues names and I’m going to feel comfortable with future assignments dealing with group work.