First contact: how good teaching begins on day one

Justin Thomas on what happens at the first meeting of lecturer and students

The first day at school or college can be scary. Silvia Razgova / The National

The start of the academic year is always vibrant, exciting and, for some, a little frightening. Across the UAE over the past month students have been undergoing the ritual of the dreaded first contact. This is when they meet their teacher for the first class of a new term.

At the first contact, most students arrive extra early. The mood is one of anxious anticipation, occasionally interrupted by outbreaks of joyful reunion as friends and past classmates enter the room. The joy is short-lived and most minds quickly drift back to thoughts of uncertainty: what will the teacher be like, will the class be difficult, will we have to introduce ourselves?

Unlike the students, I’ve been in this situation more times than I can recall; a certainty born of experience is on my side. I clear my throat and stand up tall, tele­graphing my desire to begin. Silence falls across the room. The first two minutes are critical. During this brief interval nearly indelible first impressions will be formed. Students rapidly triangulate all the incoming data: my pitch, volume, body language and, of course, my content. The incoming data is weighed and assessed with great sophistication.

It seems I made a good start; I managed to make the class laugh. The shortest distance between people is humour. Laughter is also a great anxiolytic and the class is now starting to relax, their worst nightmares have been dispelled.

So far I’ve introduced myself and the course; now it is time for reciprocation.

One by one the students introduce themselves, I’ve asked them to tell the group something interesting about themselves: “Hi I’m Reem, I’m a communications student and I love to jet-ski.” We also learn that Maitha hates monkeys and Sara speaks German. The veil of anonymity has been lifted: these strangers are slowly becoming travel companions on a voyage of intellectual discovery. Interestingly the Arabic word for travel, safr, is related to the verbal root safara, which can mean to unveil.

Just as the students formed impressions of me, I form impressions of them: Reem is an obvious leader, Shamma an anxious overachiever, Mariam a genius and Sara a giggly party-starter.

I'm reminded of a section in Rumi's Fihi Ma Fihi, comparing the teacher to the gardener: "The gardener going into an orchard looks at the trees. He knows that this one is a date, that one a fig, the other a pomegranate, a pear or an apple. To do this, he does not have to see the fruit, only the trees."

The didactic (“chalk and talk”) part of the class now begins: a gentle introduction to the history of psychology.

The students are fully engaged and I get their undivided attention, a precious commodity well appreciated by those in the advertising industry. The students discuss the ideas of Sigmund Freud, interjecting with Arabic and Islamic psychological concepts. One student suggests that the concept of Al Nafs Al Amara (the commanding self) is similar to Freud’s idea of identity and perhaps shares similarities with Plato’s lowest division in his tripartite soul. The discussions are animated, respectful and brilliantly bilingual.

The students have now broken into small discussion groups, trying to come up with explanations for depression’s rising prevalence and its female preponderance. The answers generated range from predictable to enlightened to genius bordering on insanity. I have difficulty trying to regain control of the class, but this is a good struggle. The students are now fully attentive to their peers – and education is about what students learn from each other, not just lectures and books. The Arabic word for university, jaamia, is derived from the root jama, meaning to gather together.

The first contact is over. The class ends. The discussions generated however, continue along the corridor and into the cafeteria. Some perhaps even make it home to reverberate around the family dinner table. Educational rituals and institutions shape nations.

Dr Justin Thomas is an associate professor at Zayed University

On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas