Icebreakers I Should Avoid

Classes start in seven days and, as one does, I’ve started to imagine that first week of classes. What I will say. New ways to present information. Improvements on ways I can connect with students.

Each year, the age demographic shifts. The students stay roughly the same age. I get older. However, as a demographic element, age is not homogeneous in the post-secondary college population. There will be, roughly, 70% of the students in the age range you would expect for second year college: 18-20. The rest will be “mature” or “returning” students who tend to be, I’d say, anywhere from 32 – 50 years old.

The vast majority are first or second generation Canadians. Many have very real challenges with English as a Second Language, the challenge being they are trying to do too much too fast. It is my job to teach them “Business Communications” from a Canadian business perspective. This is to be delivered at a second year college level. Everything from business etiquette to written communications (hard copy and electronic) to interpersonal communications to presentations skills.

Regardless of age, many of these students identify with social, cultural or religious communities that are out of my realm of direct experience. Many are visible minorities in other parts of the city, although typically not in the part of the city where my college is located.

As I’m sure you can picture, it is nice to just have an informal chatty few minutes at the beginning of the first class, as students arrive. Build some initial rapport. Smile. Help students feel welcome and a bit less afraid of the course that is going to make them Stand Up And Speak In Front Of Others.  So I try to come up with innocuous, inoffensive, chatty things to say. Here are some examples of “things not to say” at the opening of the first class:

Did you have a good summer?

Couple of problems with this one. First, within the Sri Lankan Tamil community, a two young men were murdered, brutally, over the summer. Right here in Toronto. At least one of them was a student at our college. A significant percentage of our student population is Tamil, a relatively close-knit group.

Furthermore, many of these students will have studied through the summer to make up for missing courses, or to get through faster. As I found out last year, many of these students don’t take a summer break.

Moving on …

What did you do on your summer vacation?

Same problems as the first question, with one additional problem. A person educated in North America asks this question with a small sense of fun or play or irony. You know, the implied reference to that essay we were asked to write, or joked about writing, in elementary school. A person who did not receive their primary education in Canada will not understand this subtext.

How do you like being back in class, back in a routine schedule?

Some didn’t leave, having attended class all summer. Many are single moms, or have part-time jobs, or more than one part-time job, or full-time jobs, or other family-related responsibilities. For some, adding a class schedule is yet another layer of responsibility. Granted, for others, it is their ONLY responsibility. Our classes are a real mixed bag this way. I’ve seen this sort of question start long, argumentative discussions about who has more responsibility and who has to work harder … which sort of sets the wrong tone for the opening of this class.

The main point to remember in all my casual conversations with this non-homogeneous student body is that their life experience up to the point in time that they walk into the classroom is likely to have been vastly different than mine. Any questions that I ask, any examples that I use in the classroom, that reinforce that distance, or reveal my erroneous assumptions, create a new teaching problem for me to overcome. Any questions I ask, or examples I use, that reinforce commonality will usually make my job easier.

Under these circumstances, on day one, I think I’ll stick with the old reliable stand-by that always seems to work in Canada. “How do you like this weather?” 🙂