Teaching
Much of our lives are spent telling stories--to each other, to an imagined audience, to ourselves. At its very essense, studying literature is a journey into the storytelling. I am a firm believer in Bloom's Taxonomy that places the ability to recall information at the bottom while creativity is at the top of the hierarchy of educational objectives. In all my classes, I dedicate at least one project for the students to respond to the text with stories of their own--stories told in words, music, paint, and even steel.
And while I keep a well-stocked toolbox of pedagogical methodologies on hand, my primary goal is to invite the students to savor the stories and respond to them not only analytically, by means of literary criticism, but also as human beings on the path of learning about who they are as the stories enter their minds, hearts, and bodies.
We also delve into the multifaceted context of these stories, exploring the layers of the culture in which they were first told and their changing reception in our own changed world.