April Heaney
Hands down the most powerful and influential people our students will know in their college years are other students—friends, classmates, co-workers, partners, mentors. Students find these relationships most often through social programming (college-sponsored or off-campus); sometimes peer connections are inspired by a class experience that involves getting to know other students.
As instructors, we have a lot of unused opportunity to encourage connections that matter beyond simply group work or community building through the semester. We can be thoughtful about how to forge connections across semesters in ways that inspire mentorship, modeling, and identity-affirming guidance.
One of the most important steps to creating meaningful connections is to view your students as an extended community. This community is not fenced off by the students in your current classes; rather, your student community stretches years down the road—in some cases even after graduation. When we see our students as an extended group of peers that we can connect to each other in helpful ways, we open up rich experiences for our current students.
Small, literacy focused classes give us many lenses into our students’ strengths and experiences. We may know them in ways that other professors and staff do not. Our knowledge of students typically extends only during the semester we have them in class—in our feedback, conversations, and perhaps in letters of recommendation or social media contacts down the road. Then, when a new class enters, our knowledge of former students fades into the background.
We can make an active effort to keep former students alive in our planning in small ways each semester. Consider these strategies as you think of ways to engage former students in your class plans.
Invite former students to engage with your students.
There are many great avenues to invite former students into your class. You can invite them as a panel, to speak with your current students candidly about your class (you can leave the room if appropriate!)—to provide advice on the amount of time (and habits) to do well on assignments, manage their time, and act on feedback, etc.
They can also share their challenges in their first semesters and which resources or actions helped them pull out of difficult times. Or, you could invite them to help you facilitate a key activity or project, where the older students can provide guidance and engage with students.
Consider inviting former students that may be most influential to underserved or underprepared students. Avoid simply inviting students with the most success; instead, focus on students who can share a range of experiences and approaches to navigating college setbacks.
Find ways (as possible) to re-invite the former students, perhaps a few times during the semester. Former students are typically flattered by the invitation and enjoy engaging with first-year students as informal mentors. Having a few opportunities to engage with the same older students will help your current students to develop more meaningful connections with them.
Share your former students’ writing or projects with your classes
Students are inspired when they see former students’ work showing up as texts or models during the semester. If these texts represent marginalized perspectives or exemplify how different types of experiences or knowledge are welcome and valued in your class, students are reassured that their contributions will be similarly valued in higher education. I will sometimes invite the authors to discuss their work with the class and answer questions about their process or ideas. As appropriate, I will enfold students texts as either “readings” that we take as seriously as other course texts or as “models” that show successful ways of approaching an assignment.
*Be sure to ask students permission to share their work ahead of time. I will ask students right after I comment on their work to share it in a future class; this makes students feel terrific (many will tell their parents you asked to keep and share their assignment). I also give students an option to have their name removed from the work if they prefer anonymity.
Put current students in touch with former students who may have insights to share about campus opportunities.
If you have former students who lead (or are strongly involved in) clubs, organizations, community service, student government, student employment/work study—or any other valuable endeavors for new students to be exposed to, keep notes on which of your current students may be helped by involvement in these programs. Then, send a list of students to your former student and invite them to reach out to your students (individually) with an invitation to attend a meeting (or meet to discuss the opportunity).
Encourage them to let your current students know that you thought they might enjoy getting involved or learning about the opportunity! (And, it can be helpful to ask your current students for permission to share their contact with others.)