Had my first meeting with the students in my first year seminar on Secularism today. We didn't talk about the course - the semester doesn't officially begin until next week; the purpose of the meeting was just to get to know each other, and to discuss yesterday's orientation speech by Eddie Glaude. My eleven students are nice, seem to like each other, and seemed comfortable participating in seminar discussion from the start. There are big differences in experience waiting to emerge, I learn from their application essays, but for today we had a friendly discussion about politics and education.
Not about Eddie's talk, you ask? Well, it was supposed to be. After some brief introductions I had everyone write down what they thought important in Eddie's talk, telling them that the purpose of the exercise was both to make sure that everyone's concerns were voiced and to show how various people's impressions are - which is why seminar instruction gives you more perspectives than a lecture. Two students hadn't been able to attend, so I periodically asked them, "based on our discussion, what do you think Eddie Glaude's speech was about?" Sad to say, they never had a chance to find out - the other students (at least the most vocal ones) missed Eddie's main points, or confused them with what our dean, who introduced him, said.
We're going to have to work on this! Listening is hard, but learning can't happen without it.
