Monday, January 15, 2007
Dr. Shannon Wooden: Engaging students' imaginations and critical minds
 Dr. Shannon Wooden, assistant professor of English, is the first recipient of the USI Foundation Outstanding Teaching by New Faculty Award, instituted in fall 2006 by the USI Foundation and presented at the Spring Faculty and Administrative Staff Meeting in January. “I couldn’t be any prouder of this teaching award, because I spend a lot of time really trying on purpose to be a good teacher,” Wooden said. “Some of that is knowing what you’re talking about, but not all of it. Probably not even the larger part. “I have had a lot of professors who were undoubtedly brilliant and who wrote great books and with whom I enjoyed working with on a one-on-one basis or having a conversation with, and sometimes those professors put a lot of thought into syllabus design, class activities, careful assignment writing, and evaluation, but often times they didn’t, and what you had was a brilliant person running a genuinely unsuccessful class. “At some institutions – maybe just on the graduate level – you can get away with that because students are self-motivated and have their own interests, but at an undergraduate institution that emphasizes teaching, I think more creative work needs to go into the methodologies of teaching.” In nominating Wooden for the award, a student wrote, “Dr. Wooden brings to the classroom an exceptional enthusiasm for and sound understanding of the subject at hand. Her classes are not routine or predictable.” Wooden said, “I can only assume the student is responding to my attempts to vary the pedagogy a bit – sometimes we work in groups, sometimes I lecture, sometimes they write – we have a variety of in-class activities so we’re not doing the same thing every day.” At the same time, she said, “We follow an incredibly detailed syllabus. It helps students imagine the semester as being coherent, instead of the idea they are going to learn one thing this week, and something else the next week. They get the sense from the very beginning that the semester is coherent, that is has integrity, and that it connects to other things in the class deliberately.” Wooden said one of her goals in the classroom is not to do all the talking. “The challenge is to get the students to say the right things. To just have a discussion is potentially fraught with error or superficiality.” After a quiz, for instance, she assigns questions to small groups who have to report on the answer and why it was asked. “It helps keep focus on what’s important.” To encourage students to think deeply, she has them do a “writearound,” in which a sheet of paper is passed around the classroom with a character’s name on it, or a broad thematic question. “The students write for 10 minutes, pass it on to the next individual or group, and they either respond to the next question or to the student who wrote before them. Then we discuss the total conclusions.” Wooden said this written method allows for more complexity of thought. “There is time and quiet in writing. Students are more careful, rather than just blurting things out. The goal of any literature class is to get students thinking more deeply than they would have without the input of the class. We assume they can all read, but we want to make sure they can read deeply, richly, and critically.” A nominating faculty member wrote, “Shannon Wooden exemplifies the best qualities of the scholarly teacher. At all levels her teaching draws on a deep knowledge of best practices, especially in the teaching of writing and critical thinking. She both broadens and deepens the students’ sense of the complexity of each literary period and its repercussions in contemporary critical and primary literature.” Wooden credits her knowledge of best practices to Dr. Erika Lindemann, her graduate school supervisor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “She taught me how to use group work, how to distribute work, and how to evaluate writing in a way that is fair, productive, and instructive. From her I learned a lot of the fundamentals, and she authored the textbook we use (A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers).” One example of Wooden’s creative teaching is an assignment in her introductory literature classes. Wooden wants to measure the students’ knowledge of the elements of fiction, and make sure they understand the interpretive significance of character, plot, and symbols. Instead of critiquing a story, they write their own story and annotate it to point out those elements. “I tell them to try to make careful decisions about imagery, the details they use to develop a character, and the kind of dialogue they write. I tell them it doesn’t matter if it’s a good story, but usually, if they are making all those careful decisions, it is a pretty good story.” She said the assignment engages students more deeply. “They enjoy doing it, and it requires them to be original and creative instead of look up a critical analysis in the library and let it shape their own. This assignment engages their imaginations as well as their critical minds. I get a better product and they have a better time.” Part of the teaching award is a grant for development that Wooden will use to continue research she will begin in early summer with a fall 2006 College of Liberal Arts Faculty Development Award. She will study rare 19th century British periodicals at St. Louis University. “I’m interested in the London Times particularly, a popular periodical, Punch, and the medical journal The Lancet.” From those three sources she hopes to get a sense of how popular opinion did or didn’t match professional opinion on various medical technologies such as blood transfusion. She is in search of stories that would illuminate the popular perceptions of medical science at the time – perceptions that might have been reflected in 19th century literature such as Dracula. “Blood is not my only interest, just the most immediate one right now. I’m going to see what’s out there and see if I can get a sense of how popular imagination viewed medicine.” The Foundation award will allow her to follow up on her research later in the summer. Wooden holds a PhD English with emphasis in 19th century British literature from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, from which she also received the Dougald MacMillan Award for Best Dissertation. She has been with USI since 2003. Look for a feature about Christine Payne, who received the USI Foundation Outstanding Teaching by Adjunct Faculty Award, on the USI Web site on January 29. |
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