Orientation Week Course, hosted by Faculty
A note from the Orientation Week Planning Group: We spent two days creating a basic
structure that will provide common experiences for students and faculty. We also offer some
pedagogical approaches for each of these meetings, and encourage individual faculty to modify,
improve upon, or completely replace the options below. This handout includes key components
(things we think all faculty should incorporate into the meeting), options (possible lesson
plans/structures), and invitations for further development. Our aim should be consistent: to
welcome students to Evergreen, give them a taste of academic life, and introduce the Academic
Statement. We hope we’ve made a contribution to making this part of O-Week a rich and
stimulating experience for all of us.
--Kevin Francis, Nancy Koppelman, Phyllis Lane, Kitty Jones, Sandy Yannone, Sarah
Williams, Brian Walter, Vauhn Foster-Grahler, Elizabeth Williamson, Nancy Murray
*
Title for Orientation Week Course: “Learning with Faculty at Evergreen”
Faculty meet with ~15 students: same group all week; first-years and transfers meet separately.
Monday: Introduction: Learning with Faculty at Evergreen
Tuesday: Convocation, Seminar, and Introduction to the Entrance Essay
Thursday: Sharing Entrance Essays and Looking Ahead to the Academic Statement
Monday, Sept. 17, 3:00-5:00: Introduction: Learning with Faculty at Evergreen
Key Components:
1) faculty introduction and O-Week overview
2) student introductions
3) Evergreen’s philosophy
4) five foci
5) introduction to book, speaker, and seminar
1) Faculty Introduction and O-Week Overview
Introduce yourself. Describe what you love/appreciate about Evergreen, and what you hope
students will do/learn/accomplish during their time at the college. Describe the basic outline of
events and meeting times for O-Week activities.
2) Student Introductions
Option: Students go around in whole group and introduce themselves: where you’re from, year
in college, why you came to Evergreen, silly icebreaker (such as “tell us something that will help
us remember you” [a student once said, “My mother kissed Elvis”]).
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Option: Students pair up and introduce themselves to each other. The group reconvenes and the
students introduce their partners to the whole group.
Option: Break up into groups of 3 to 4 students. Students introduce themselves and discuss a
passage on education from the book (e.g., “When I made it home from school that afternoon…”
p. 45; “Of course, as a stubbornly determined teenager…” p. 53; “As I sat in the room taking it
all in…” p. 59 [or other passages that would serve as good prompts for discussions about
education]). What does education mean to LaNier? What does education mean to them? Why
attend college? Have students introduce themselves to the larger group and share something
about their discussion.
Invitation: What other methods of introduction and ice-breaking are effective?
3) Evergreen’s Philosophy:
Option: Here are some aspects of Evergreen’s approach to education that you might share.

From the Social Contract: “Evergreen is an institution and a community that continues to
organize itself so that it can clear away obstacles to learning.”

No grades, no departments, no faculty rank, no majors, no distribution requirements.

Narrative transcripts: faculty evaluations of students, student self-evaluations, student
evaluations of faculty, Academic Statement.

Liberal arts: an old but ever-changing tradition in the western world. The initial intent of
the liberal arts was to be an education appropriate for free people: those areas of
knowledge that people need in order to know how to be free. Therefore, traditionally
only a small percent of people—those who were politically free, which meant men in
positions of power—were deemed worthy of such an education. Through the ages, as the
idea of freedom has changed, so has accessibility to liberal arts education. Evergreen is a
public liberal arts college, which means it is committed to the widest possible
accessibility. This means that we encourage a form of education which values a highly
diverse community of students, staff, and faculty; breadth and depth within disciplines;
critical thinking; interdisciplinary approaches to perpetual questions and real-world
problems; experimentation; and creativity.

You have unusual freedom at Evergreen; faculty and staff help you figure out how to be
responsible with it and make the most of the opportunities at Evergreen to use it. Liberal
Arts is not the same as “Libertarian Arts.”
Invitation: What are other aspects of Evergreen that you would emphasize?
4) Five Foci: Introduce the five foci:
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
Interdisciplinary Study: Students learn to pull together ideas and concepts from many
subject areas, which enables them to tackle real-world issues in all their complexity.

Collaborative Learning: Students develop knowledge and skills through shared learning,
rather than learning in isolation and in competition with others.

Learning Across Significant Differences: Students learn to recognize, respect and bridge
differences - critical skills in an increasingly diverse world.

Personal Engagement: Students develop their capacities to judge, speak and act on the basis
of their own reasoned beliefs.

Linking Theory with Practical Applications: Students understand abstract theories by
applying them to projects and activities and by putting them into practice in real-world
situations.
Option: Faculty describes one of the foci and how it matters for teaching.
Option: The above, and then have students divide into five groups and assign each group one of
the foci. What does it mean to them? What are examples of this kind of learning that students
have experienced in their previous education or life? Students select someone from the group to
report out.
Invitation: What are other effective ways to introduce one or more of five foci to students?
5) Introduction to Book, Speaker, and Seminar
Why this book? LaNier is articulating how her education connects her to history. She is doing
the same kind of thinking that we expect from students: reflecting on the significance of her
education and life in a broader context through an autobiographical framework.
We have the wonderful and rare opportunity to hear from her in person tomorrow. The book will
come alive for you when you encounter the author and hear her voice. Later in the week, we’ll
have two meetings to discuss the book and begin to write about the book and our own
educational aspirations. We’ll share our ideas in discussion and in writing. Bring your book!
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 10:00-12:00: All-campus Convocation with Carlotta Walls LaNier
Tuesday, 3:00-5:00: Seminar on Carlotta Walls LaNier’s A Mighty Long Way: My Journey
to Justice at Little Rock Central High School and convocation talk
Key Components:
1) introduction to seminar
2) discuss questions from summer letter & others from faculty/students
3) free-write on essay prompt
4) introduce Thursday meeting
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1) Introduction to seminar: Seminar is for learning from a book by discussing it with other
people: thinking well so that you can write well about what you think.
Option: Faculty might provide a “pre-seminar” worksheet.
Option: Faculty might ask students about their previous experiences in group discussions: what
makes them good, what thwarts them.
Invitation: What are effective ways of introducing seminar to new Evergreen students?
2) Discuss Questions from Summer Letter
When students receive the book in the mail, they will also receive a letter from Michael
Zimmerman. The letter will welcome them to the college, and ask them to read and think about
the book in preparation for O-Week. The letter may include these questions for them to consider
in advance:
1. Consider the lives and histories of your family or of elders or mentors in your
community who have mattered to you. How does the timeline of their lives parallel
LaNier’s history and experience at Central High School? Whom do you know who is
a contemporary of LaNier, her parents, or her children? If possible, ask family
members, elders, or mentors what they know and remember about these historical
events. See www.etc [links will be available on Evergreen’s website]for links.)
2. LaNier makes a number of important decisions that have far-reaching consequences
for herself, her family, her community, and the nation. What key decisions does she
make? How does she arrive at these decisions? Whom does she consult? What key
decisions have you faced? How do you make these kinds of decisions?
Additional Questions:

LaNier writes extensively about her family and community in the first chapters. What are
her roots and support structures? How does she draw upon them as she makes her way
through her life? What are your roots and support structures? How will you draw upon
them as you make your way through college?

Consider some of the significant historical events that LaNier describes in the book (e.g.,
Emmett Till murder, p. 38; Montgomery bus boycott, p. 41). How do these events shape
her sense of identity and her mission in life? How did she see her role in the Civil Rights
movement when she was young, and how does she see it now?

Was LaNier “successful” in her education? How should we think about success in this
situation? How does LaNier’s story help you to think critically about standards for success
in education or in life?
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
What kinds of obstacles are in the way of LaNier’s learning at different points in her
education? What kind of obstacles do you think you might face? What obstacles are within
and beyond your control? What character traits or personal qualities allowed LaNier to
meet and overcome obstacles?
Option: Additional Themes (with the caution that the seminar’s main purpose is for students to
get their feet wet having a group discussion of a book, hearing many voices in the room,
listening well, basing comments on the text, etc):



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How does LaNier’s story help you understand the nature of democracy?
Examine the plaque with LaNier’s quotations on it. What would your plaque say?
Themes of order and disorder
Intersection of race, class, and gender
Connections to northern migration
Connections to historical discrimination in the Pacific Northwest (e.g., Japanese-American
internment, racial restrictive covenants)
Connections to prejudice against those with strong religious beliefs
Invitation: What other seminar questions come to mind ? How might you help students generate
seminar questions?
3) Free-write on an Essay Prompt
Students pick one of these prompts and free-write in response to it. There’s an assignment for
Thursday: students should flesh out what they begin to write today and bring their essay, either
typed or hand-written, to the final session on Thursday. They will not hand these essays in, but
they’ll share ideas from them and they will be the basis for future writing about their education
during the year. Faculty lead a final debrief and answer questions .
1. How does LaNier’s story help you to think about your own?
2. LaNier enrolled at Central because she was impressed by its educational resources (p. 45).
Think about your own goals and what you know about Evergreen’s resources. What kinds of
learning will help you accomplish your goals? (For example, interdisciplinary programs,
internships, individual learning contracts, study abroad, lab and studio work, communitybased service learning.)
3. As an African-American growing up after Brown v. Board of education which paved the way
for school integration, LaNier made history; history made LaNier. What is one of the key
issues of your historical moment? How do you want your education to prepare you to
participate in your particular historical moment?
4. Imagine yourself at some point in the future: one quarter from now, one year from now, the
day of your college graduation, fifty years from now (akin to LaNier’s perspective on her
education). Describe how you fulfilled your aspirations, speaking in your “voice from the
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future.” What did you accomplish in that time? What were your most rewarding experiences?
What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?
Thursday, Sept. 20, 3:00-5:00: Sharing Entrance Essays and Looking Ahead to the
Academic Statement
Key Components:
1) sharing Entrance Essays
2) looking ahead to the Academic Statement
3) closing questions and comments
1) Sharing Entrance Essays
Students bring fleshed-out essays, typed or handwritten, (some students won’t be able to type
them; the important thing is for students to write them), to share with faculty and other students.
Students won’t “hand them in.”
Option: Groups of 3 to 4 students. Each student reads his/her statement aloud and receives
feedback from other students. Students use method described in They Say, I Say chapter to
provide feedback about the essay (handout will be available to faculty on line).
2) Looking Ahead to the Academic Statement
What happens to ideas developed in Entrance Essay?

They serve as the basis for the first draft of your Academic Statement. The Academic
Statement will be a graduation requirement, starting with the incoming class of 2013:
o From the catalog:

The minimum requirement for the Bachelor of Arts or the Bachelor of
Science degree is 180 credits, and an academic statement of up to 750
words to be written by the student. In the statement, students summarize
and reflect carefully on their liberal arts education. Students begin work
on the statement when they first enroll, then develop and revise it annually
under the guidance of faculty. The final version becomes an important
part of each student’s transcript.
o All programs work on self-evaluation at some point—part of educational
experiment since the beginning. Academic Statement is a new version of a longstanding Evergreen practice. You are helping to invent this new approach.

Fall-program Support: In many (but not all) fall programs, faculty will devote several hours
to developing a preliminary draft of your Academic Statement. Make sure to bring your
Entrance Essay, which you just wrote, to these workshops. Your essay is the foundation for
future work on your Academic Statement.
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
All-Campus Days: In both winter and spring quarters, no classes or governance meetings will
be scheduled on the Wednesdays before Academic Fairs. Faculty and staff will lead events
on navigating the curriculum, careers, graduate school pathways, etc.

Writing Center: Continuing support for writing and periodic workshops on the Academic
Statement.
Option: You might want to introduce Academic Statement as part of the transcript. (Our group
had different views on whether such information was important at this point, whether students
would be suffering from information overload, etc. Faculty should use their own judgment.) You
might describe what an Academic Statement is, what a transcript looks like—program
description, faculty evaluation, potentially self-evaluation, where an Academic Statement fits
into the transcript. Academic statement will allow you describe and reflect upon your own
education. Who were you when you arrived at Evergreen? What did you hope to accomplish?
What did you accomplish? What areas did you study and which were most important?
Remember that YOU will define and describe your major area(s) of study in the statement.
3) Closing questions and comments
Option: You may want to choose a closing activity that allows all the students to share their
voices. Based on the renga, an ancient tradition of Japanese linked verse, students choose a few
sentences from their writing that speak to their experiences during the week. The chosen passage
can represent insights gained, questions left unanswered, personal connections, etc. You can
choose to have students read in succession around the circle or as they feel called to add their
voice. During this reading, no one stops the motion of voices to comment or critique. This is
primarily and importantly a listening activity that allows each individual to contribute to the
creation of a collective spoken-word journey. We think this activity has the potential to serve as
a touchstone for students during their introduction to their Evergreen education.
Invitation: What other knowledge is important for students at this point? What other possible
ideas for creating a sense of closure for this week and beginning their Evergreen education?