When students walk into the first day of each of their classes, it has become commonplace to start with icebreakers. They’re intended to be a way for people to get to know each other in the classroom so they can be comfortable for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, there has been a general disdain for the practice. A large portion of students see icebreakers as a chore, thinking that it’s relatively immature for high school students.
There are different aspects of icebreakers certain students may have a problem with, such as the unnatural introductions that certain types of icebreakers provide.
“I guess there are two, real defining traits of bad icebreakers that I’ve seen, and these are probably the most common. They kind of feel like elementary school icebreakers, which, it’s stuff like, oh yeah, just team building exercises. It’s a new class, we don’t really know anybody right now, Sure it could be fun, but I feel like that’s the default, and I don’t think that should be the default. I think things like just natural learning of how you’re here,” Junior Tim Courneya said.
The use of icebreakers is supposed to be meant to make students comfortable. This could be done through natural interaction throughout the year, instead of a forced three-sentence conversation.
“I definitely think that there are people who engage. but I think overwhelmingly, they kind of sit to serve that, or they kind of sit to fill them on the first day, first couple of days, with just something that’s not just reading over the syllabus or actual teaching instruction. I think that that might be welcome, but going through the motions is something that I know from responses that I’ve heard that some of the people in a lot of my classes where we had icebreakers.”
Icebreakers could also just put students off on the wrong foot, possibly hurting the relationship between the class and the teacher.
“I’m generally a more socially outgoing person. But whenever there is an icebreaker among certain students in the room, there’s just this nervous energy, said Courneya “A lot of people are more introverted. A lot of people don’t want to share that much about them. They don’t want to participate with people who they don’t necessarily know.”
Icebreakers can be useful to a handful of very outgoing students but in most students in the post-COVID age, the idea of icebreakers as they are now, does not click as well.
Instead of putting all of the effort into the students to open up, the teachers should be responsible for gaining their students’ trust.
“You are just working on your computers to present a couple of, like, a slide, or like a couple of slides, that’s extremely counterproductive to me. I think that icebreakers if they should take place should be taking place in person. I think that that’s probably the worst experience I’ve had with an icebreaker”
At the end of the day, the teacher is the leader of the classroom, and the responsibility should be on their shoulders to engage in conversation with their students about themselves. The average student doesn’t need two minutes of a robotic conversation to feel comfortable, that will simply come with time.
