English teachers foster classroom community through various forms of gift exchanges

As sophomore Emily Ta eagerly walked into English teacher Marcos Cortez’s English 10 class, she was met with homemade gifts from students in her “pod group.”

For the past five years of teaching in the district, Cortez, who now teaches English 10 and English 10 MAP, has hosted a gift exchange in his class in which students sign up for any class day in the first semester to give and receive gifts from three to five people — a cohort known as “pod group.”

Throughout the first semester, each student has one day 

in which they are given personal homemade gifts, with nothing store-bought apart from ingredients or supplies. 

This tradition is meant to bring students together and allow them to become comfortable communicating with each other, especially if the group consists of people who wouldn’t normally interact with each other, Cortez said. It celebrates each student for being a part of the classroom community. 

In order for a student’s pod group to know what to give them, they turn to a slide filled out at the beginning of the year with bullet points of items each student would like to recieve, Ta said. 

In her case, Ta got some homemade cookies, brownies and a poster for her pod day. 

The gift exchange has a significant participation point value attached to it during the first semester, but is optional in second semester. Nevertheless, most of Cortez’s students opted to continue the tradition in the spring semester.

The project was successful even during online learning, Cortez said. Despite the lack of peer-to-peer interaction exacerbated by the pandemic, he was able to keep the gift exchange going, during which students came up with creative ideas such as personalized playlists, digital artwork and even a detailed road trip guide, in lieu of physical gifts.

“It’s helped break down barriers between students who might not normally hang out or communicate with one another,” he said. “I try to build and maintain a supportive environment, and help students think about people besides themselves in the classroom.” 

Ta’s experience is a testament to this — she didn’t speak to the students in her pod group much before Cortez’s project, but now she has a good relationship with them, and they often help each other with assignments. 

Cortez, who occasionally partakes in freelance journalism, wrote an article detailing the pod day initiative for Edutopia, a site where educators and experts can share learning strategies. Cortez often refers to Edutopia when designing projects for his English classes, especially for project-based and alternate learning. 

“In the English department, we all share our resources and are on the lookout for something new,” Cortez said. “As teachers, we should be looking for innovative resources all the time. We have the responsibility of creating and maintaining a classroom community where students can be themselves and communicate with each other meaningfully.”

English 9 MAP and AP Literature teacher Suzanne Herzman has also fostered a gift-giving tradition in her classes over the years.  For example, she organized an Emersonian gift exchange in her two AP Literature classes from late December through early January. 

The project began as an alternative option for a quiz on the Transcendentalist movement. Based on principles from one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays, students create gifts that follow the transcendentalists’ principles.

“The gift should not be something of monetary value,” Herzman said. “If you are a musician, it makes sense to make music.”

The idea came from a mentor Herzman had at Stanford, where she received her master’s degree in education and teaching credential, and she’s been doing this as a way to relieve stress for students. The tradition has continued for 13 years for her AP Literature class.

“The partners are picked at random, so it’s an opportunity to get to know someone you wouldn’t ordinarily talk to,” she said. “The point of the exchange is to get to know the humans in the classroom for who they are — essentially creating a community.”