Two-Year College English Association of the Pacific Northwest

i agree that we should strive for "student-centered" classrooms, but not by ignoring the "must read" authors or the selections that will help students develop critical thinking skills and broaden their knowledge. rather, i think my greatest contribution is in helping them connect those pieces to their own lives. A recent example is the poetry presentations they prepared for class. Each student chose one poem from my "prepared" list and one poem of their own liking. Then they were expected to draw a parallel between the two. They were free to choose any poem from which they were able to take some personal value - including popular song lyrics - but they had to be able to illustrate for the class how each poet had impacted them - was it a similar theme? Effective imagery? Tone or diction? The class was scheduled to be over at 10 pm, but we were still sitting around (all of us) discussing the poems at 10:20.