from Chris
Every semester, on the last day of class, I invite my students to go for a walk with me. It’s a short walk, usually just a lap around our loop-shaped hallway. I let the scuff of my cowboy boots on the tile floor lead the way.
As we depart, I give the students two rules. I ask them not to talk, and I tell them, “Notice things.”
The purpose of the exercise, which I do on the first day of class as well as the last, is to set a metaphor that I build my entire teaching philosophy around: “Take the time to take the walk.” The walk serves as a metaphor for writing, which we talk about after taking the walk for the first time. Then I reinforce that throughout the semester, in every class, for four years.
The walk is about paying attention to detail, about going through your paper more than once, about finding your voice, about noticing things your peers don’t notice and noticing things they do. It’s about not falling prey to complacency. It’s about walking at your own pace, in your own direction, to notice the things that only you can notice.
On their walk on the last day of class, I also ask the students to notice how much they have each changed since taking the walk at the start of the semester. They are different people now than they were at the start of the semester, and vastly different than they were at the start of the year, when some of them walked with me during their very first class of their college careers.
In a couple weeks, a few of my students will walk across the graduation platform. They’ll get their diplomas and a handshake from the university president, and then they’ll toss their caps in the air. And then they’ll walk off into the world.
If they take any lesson with them, it’s that I hope they’ll always remember to take the time to take the walk.