by Elissa Sonnenberg, MSEd

Fall has always been my favorite time of year—crisp breezes offer hints of rebirth after a long, hot, Cincinnati summer. This year, as I look forward to meeting a fresh new crop of UC students, the pre-birth contractions have already begun as talk of semester conversion and an exciting office move pull me back toward campus, anticipating new routines and pedagogical discoveries.

But as July matured, it was the whiff of independence that quickened my pulse—the independence to create new spaces for learning and growing alongside students. The independence to find ways to glimpse how the process of learning can part the curtain between the teacher and the taught, revealing extraordinary, and often unexpected, truths.

I found that curtain opened for me in an unexpected place last summer, during a one-night-a-week introductory journalism course. I confess that these three-hour classes terrify me. I teach in 15-minute increments much of the time, trained to keep track of my students’ attention span like a television script writer poised for commercial breaks.

And I’ll admit, I find it difficult to create, much less sustain, a sense of community with a group of strangers who gather just once every seven days for a stretch of time that either seems overwhelming or not quite long enough.

In classes that meet weekly, I feel inordinately under pressure. Here are the thoughts that typically run through my mind before class: One muffed lesson means one-tenth of a course gone wrong. One off-the-mark assignment means a wasted week and no learning at all. One misstep means there’s no chance of rebuilding a fractured community.

So I approached last summer determined to face my fears, or at least try a few new ways to transform my classroom into a place where students could learn about the widely diverse world of journalism as they safely explored our media culture.

What better way to start a new journey than with sustenance? A friend suggested I move beyond occasionally bringing snacks to class and create a sign-up sheet for students to assemble weekly treats. It was the best kind of friendly suggestion: brilliant in its simplicity, smack-my-forehead obvious in its directness.

Despite our differences (this class of 12 boasted 10 different majors), food gave us everything from common conversations (who knew Busken’s frown-face cookies cost the same as the smiley face cookies?) to communal problem-solving (when one student forgot to bring food, we had to make do with a hodge-podge of leftover Valentine candies and a half-empty bag of pretzels). As the weeks wore on, a near competition broke out to see who could bring the most healthy yet tasty snacks. There were watermelon slices and vegetable cookies.

An unexpected side effect emerged. The more students grew used to sharing during our break, the less time they spent out of the classroom—and yes, I mean during the break. They spent less time huddled in the hallway making cell-phone calls, preferring to talk with each other instead. While they weren’t always talking about class—the vegetable cookies caused quite a flurry of shared baking tips—they were connecting. Scratch that. We were connecting.

One of the most conscious changes I made in this summer course stemmed from a training session I attended last spring. While the course focused on college journalism education, one component dealt with setting classroom ground rules in a purposeful and inclusive way I’d not seen before. Program facilitators showed examples of teachers who made personal commitments to inclusion as they defined their classroom environments. I liked the idea so much, I took it and made it my own.

My definition looks like this: “As an individual and member of this academic community, I am strongly committed to sensitivity concerning gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and disability. Should you feel embarrassed or hurt by any sexist, racist or otherwise offensive remarks or behavior by an instructor, guest speaker or student in this class, please let me know right away.”

While we reviewed all of the guidelines during the first class, we didn’t linger over this verbage. Instead, I stumbled upon lessons that reinforced them.

One of the first ways I get to know students, no matter their majors, is to ask where and how they get news and information about the world. As these students shared their favorite news sources, from The New York Times to The Catholic Telegraph, they spontaneously explained their attraction to these sources. The fans of NPR said they liked the depth of coverage and appreciated what they called a liberal bias. Fox News proponents respected the honesty of the channel’s open bias.

In less than an hour, they had sensed each other’s distinctly different worldviews. That led to open discussions about the inevitability of personal biases and the role of journalism to move beyond them. We talked about how personal histories impact what “news” we do and do not trust.

There was no shortage of opportunities to explore the validity of our personal biases, and at times stretch our personal comfort zones. For example, was a controversial cartoon on the cover of The New Yorker an expression of free speech or libel or treason? Do war reporters unconsciously support their own countries in their news coverage? Can a homogenous staff at a media outlet capture the stories that define its surroundings—if people in those surroundings don’t look like anyone at the assignment desk?

I updated course readings and viewings to illustrate up-to-the-minute best (and not so best) practices in journalism. We watched a documentary about the Arab news outlet Al Jazeera, discussed the legitimacy of a “60 Minutes” segment that compared a Guatemalan immigrant’s journey to America to a “trail of tears” and the “Underground Railroad,” and read a book that traced the impact of media—print and broadcast—on the Civil Rights movement. Students found diverse sources and points of view in every story we read and every piece of news we viewed.

And in response, they responded. Conversations reached out of class and onto the web via a course-specific wiki website where students regularly posted and responded to each other.

The course evaluations reinforced my sense of the strength of the class overall, but the best part for me has been that some of the students from that class have kept in touch with me all year long. I remember the connections we forged as the dog days stretch toward September and that familiar sense of rebirth hovers in the air. And I’m excited about whatever new truths lie just out of reach, ready to be uncovered.

-Elissa Sonneberg, MSEd
Assistant Director of Journalism Program
Field Service Assistant Professor
McMicken College of A&S, English & Comparative Literatures
University of Cincinnati

Tags: 60 Minutes, Al Jazeera, autumn, Busken's bakery, Catholic Telegraph, diversity, evening classes, food, Fox News, higher education, journalism, learning community, media culture, news, NPR, Semester Conversion, The New York Times, The New Yorker, three-hour courses, wiki, worldviews

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under Art of Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.