Travel: This year marks the tenth anniversary of my study abroad to England, and I regularly dream of going back. It probably has something to do with me teaching Early British Literature for the College, but I would like to visit the homes and areas of the authors I teach. I know I would open up Vidgrid and record a quick lecture for my students with my husband telling me to “stop working, you’re on vacation!” But seriously, if I could be in the Tower of London talking about Sir Walter Raleigh, how cool would that be?
Food: My favorite food is definitely Mexican food. It’s the one type of cuisine I will make at home for dinner, eat the leftovers the next day, and then go out for Mexican food that night. Specifically, I love making tamales with my family and piling on the cilantro.
Movie/Streaming Show: Over the summer I started watching earlier seasons of Saturday Night Live. This led to me getting hooked on Only Murders in the Building. So when I’m not watching Bluey with my one-year-old, I love the shenanigans of Steve Martin and Martin Short.
Active Learning Strategy & Joyful Experience: Since moving to completely online teaching, I’ve had to work through my love-hate relationship with discussion boards. The discussion board is a great tool for active learning, if set up correctly. Before completing the active learning cohort, I knew my discussion boards were considered “mostly active.” Students could pick and choose which questions to answer and needed to respond to their peers. However, the person least active on “the board” was me. Though I gave my students a variety of questions, meaning I would have good variety in responses, grading was still “boring,” and answers were still the same, superficial, or repetitive just so my length requirement was met.
After the active learning cohort, I figured out that I needed to change my purpose for the discussion boards. To get students to connect to the material more, to get them to support each other’s interpretations, and to see true back-and-forth conversations, I needed to change my goals.
I have adapted questions to give students creative outlets to engaging with Early British literature and to even become characters from our stories. Now, I can’t wait to see what my students say and do with this work. To top it all off, I’ve now had a student tell me that they love the discussion boards. It’s just one, but I’ll take it. It is refreshing and I can truly say they are learning and digesting what is most meaningful for them in this class.
