Teaching Profile

My Transition to the Active-Learning Approach to Teaching

It happened in an afternoon class. I was passionately lecturing about William Faulkner’s story, “A Rose for Emily,” when I noticed students sleeping, staring blankly, or texting. The projector’s indigo light splaying across the sea of faces could not hide the flagrant apathy on display. I was disappointed, maybe even heartbroken, but mostly nonplussed. I have since realized that students have had facts shoved at them from K-12, but they have not learned how to process and apply those facts to real situations. Thus, I challenge myself to create learning activities that invite intellectual application and emotional involvement.

Currently, there is much ado about transformative teaching—teaching that shapes the moral, civic compass of our students so that they are well-informed adults. While this may be a current trend in teaching, I have always used teaching to foster transformative experiences. The Humanities fail us if they are not offering transformative experiences that teach people about society’s failings and why they should care. However, in our K-12 education system, literature often is detached from its transformative power. Consequently, students expect to be bored with learning the mechanics of writing or memorizing terms that name the parts of fiction, poetry, and drama rather than learning how to critically engage in finding meaning and writing about its cultural relevancy. Therefore, in my classes, students are surprised when I ask them to connect cultural anxieties to textual forms and themes. I realize that if I want students to have a transformative experience, I must encourage them to apply literary analyses to analyses of cultural issues. For example, after reading Susan Glaspell's play Trifles, I tell the class that we are going to put the main character, Ms. Wright, on trial for murder. The play is about a domestically abused woman who may have killed her husband when he slept because he strangled her canary, the only living creature she loved and who loved her. Students do research on battered spouse syndrome, trauma, and the legal history of domestic abuse. I assign a district attorney, defense lawyer, the defendant, witnesses, a psychologist, and jury. As the trial unravels the facts, students often are surprised about their changed reaction to Ms. Wright. Most of them begin the trial with the assumption that she is guilty of premeditated murder, but they soon realize that she was a victim of abuse with no way out. They become bothered by the lack of space for mercy to meet justice. The jury's verdict for each class is never the same, but the discussion of the moral complexities are always poignant. The experience teaches them about the nature of juries, the American justice system, and how to consider facts and weigh them against legal, ethical, and moral codes.

As a result of active learning, when students miss my classes, most of them do not ask me if they missed anything; they ask me what they missed. Assessments range from quizzes to group activities, required maps of their inquiry process, close reading exercises to class activities that introduce students to critical theories. I also assign essays that display how students have processed the knowledge the course sought to impart. The research projects encourage students to develop lines of inquiry, test their theories, and present their results through rhetorical strategies that connect their humanity to that of their intended audiences. Students who communicate their critical connections demonstrate their transformation from students to critically thinking, socially aware citizens of a diverse, global community.