Knowing Students’ Names is Important, but Figuring This Out is a Game-changer for Building Classroom Community.
If you’ve ever found yourself wrestling with how to build genuine connection in a classroom—especially one where difficult or emotionally charged topics are on the syllabus—this post is worth your time. This post centers on a deceptively simple assignment: asking students to list the three most important things to know about them. It’s not flashy. It’s not particularly time-consuming. But it’s offered real insight in classrooms where consensus is unlikely, and where students need to feel seen before they’re willing to speak.
While I agree that knowing students’ names is critical to building a thriving classroom community, I consider it a starting point toward the bigger and broader goal: creating a learning environment where students trust you, are willing to take risks, and are invested in what happens and classroom outcomes. In my experience, the latter work requires much deeper and more deliberate effort on the instructor’s part.