The opening moments of a class session are often treated as routine, a time for announcements, slides, or quickly diving into content. Yet these first minutes are far more consequential than they appear. They set the tone for learning, shape student-faculty relationships, and influence engagement and motivation. Research shows that intentional beginnings spark curiosity, foster belonging, and help students focus by connecting new material to prior knowledge (Ambrose et al., 2010; Fong et al., 2024; National Academies, 2018).
Despite their importance, these early moments are frequently overlooked. Many classes begin with administrative tasks or a silent pause, unintentionally signaling that efficiency or content coverage is valued over connection and reflection. This article explores how faculty can transform these early minutes into opportunities for meaningful connection and culturally responsive practice. Drawing on the frameworks of Care Ethics and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP), it provides strategies to design class openings that model care, affirm diverse identities, and cultivate intellectual curiosity. These approaches encourage instructors to start class with intention, setting the stage for a classroom culture rooted in respect, trust, and engagement.
Theoretical Groundwork: Care as an Ethical and Educational Imperative
Intentional class openings rest on the recognition that the faculty-student relationship is both an ethical and educational priority. These minutes are not just practical; they communicate what the instructor values and set expectations for how the class community will operate. Thoughtful openings signal to students that their presence matters, that their voices are heard, and that learning is a shared, relational experience.
Care Ethics: Relationship, Liberation, and Reciprocity
Drawing on Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, Care Ethics frames care as a relational and liberatory practice. Gilligan (2016, 2024) emphasizes that care is not sentimentality but a moral orientation grounded in integrity, reciprocity, and resistance to domination. In the classroom, care becomes a commitment to authentic connection and mutual respect, rather than a simple display of friendliness or kindness. Noddings (2013) translates this orientation into education through three components:
- Modeling: Demonstrating care through relational action by showing up authentically, validating student presence, and attending to student needs. For example, a faculty member may begin class by sharing a brief story or reflection that models curiosity, vulnerability, or cultural awareness.
- Dialogue: Engaging students in conversations about what care looks and feels like, building shared understanding and empathy. Short prompts or check-ins at the start of class invite students to express perspectives and experiences, signaling that their insights matter.
- Practice: Creating opportunities for students to enact care toward themselves and peers, reflecting on these experiences to support a caring community. This could include peer sharing, collaborative exercises, or brief reflective writing to reinforce relational norms.
Together, these elements position care as both an ethical and educative principle, grounding the first minutes of class in values that support learning, trust, and mutual respect.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Care in Action
Gloria Ladson-Billings’s Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (1995) ensures that care is enacted equitably in diverse classrooms. CRP resists deficit thinking and hierarchical instruction by affirming identities, valuing students’ cultural experiences, fostering belonging, and sharing authority through co-constructed learning. When combined with Care Ethics, CRP transforms opening minutes into opportunities to model care, engage in dialogue, and center cultural relevance from the very start of class. For example, beginning a session with a quote from a culturally diverse author or a reflection on students’ lived experiences can affirm their identities and signal that all perspectives are valued.
Active Practice: Designing Your Strategy
Faculty can translate these theoretical frameworks into action by intentionally designing their first minutes around Modeling, Dialogue, or Practice. This process begins with reflection and moves toward purposeful design.
Step 1: Reflect on Your Current Routine
Consider the first one to three minutes of your class. Do you read announcements, review slides, or begin content immediately? What messages do these actions send about what you value and whose voices matter? A rushed or silent start may unintentionally prioritize efficiency over connection. Reflecting on these patterns reveals the implicit messages your openings communicate. Faculty might notice, for example, that beginning with slides alone emphasizes content over community, or that a long pause without guidance leaves students unsure how to engage.
Step 2: Experience and Adapt Care-Based Models
The following models illustrate how to enact Care Ethics and CRP in brief, practical ways:
Quiet Reflection (Centering Practice and Integrity)
A brief reflective moment allows students to settle and connect personal experience to new learning.
- Use culturally affirming prompts linking content to lived experience or community knowledge.
- Offer accessible participation options, such as anonymous polls, Post-it responses, or whiteboards.
- Outcome: Students ground themselves and activate prior knowledge.
Playful Activity (Centering Modeling and Connection)
A short playful activity energizes students and strengthens community.
- Incorporate movement or tactile play, such as Construct and Reconstruct, where students build quick models related to an upcoming concept.
- Use inclusive activities like The Wind Blows to validate diverse identities.
- Outcome: Play reduces anxiety and builds collective connection.
Interactive Read-Aloud or Prompt (Centering Dialogue and Cultural Relevance)
A brief quote, passage, or image invites immediate reflection and critical thinking.
- Choose culturally sustaining texts that represent diverse perspectives.
- Follow with turn-and-talk, quick writes, or predictions to validate student voices.
- Outcome: Dialogue centers diverse perspectives and fosters engagement. This approach also encourages critical thinking from the outset, helping students connect personal experience to course concepts.
Step 3: Design Your Personalized Plan
Create an opening strategy aligned with your discipline, teaching style, and goals:
- Select a component to center: Modeling, Dialogue, or Practice.
- Identify your goal for how students should feel or what they should achieve.
- Design an opening that enacts this component in culturally relevant ways. Reflect on how this small change might influence the broader classroom environment over time.
Committing to Connection: Intentional Beginnings
When faculty design their opening minutes with intention, the start of class becomes more than a transition; it becomes a pedagogical act. These moments model care, spark curiosity, and affirm students as whole people. They foster belonging, strengthen relational trust, and create conditions for deeper intellectual engagement. Intentional openings are not simply useful strategies; they are acts of care and cultural responsiveness. By grounding the first minutes of each session in connection and integrity, faculty cultivate a learning community where all students can thrive. Thoughtful openings set the tone for collaboration, curiosity, and meaningful engagement that extends throughout the class session.
Dr. Norline Wild, PhD, MSW (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7772-0335) is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Niagara University, NY. Her practice-based research uses qualitative methods grounded in social justice and guided by critical pedagogy to promote systemic change in education around identity, diversity, justice, and action. Dr. Wild focuses on the power of picture books to support preservice P–12 teachers in developing inclusive and transformative teaching practices. She also explores playful learning in higher education as a way to model and inspire playful, inquiry-driven approaches to learning across PreK–12 settings.
References
Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. Jossey-Bass.
Fong, C. J., Denson, E., Johnson, C. L., & Shaffer, P. (2024). The impact of sense of belonging on STEM student motivation and academic achievement: A systematic review. Educational Psychology Review, 36(34).
Gilligan, C. (1993). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, C. (2023). In a human voice. Polity.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.
Langmann, E. (2025). The first five minutes: How a strong class opening enhances student engagement. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 22(1), 1–10.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How people learn II: Learners, contexts, and cultures. The National Academies Press.
Noddings, N. (2013). Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education (2nd ed.). University of California Press.