On Changing Hats: The Challenges of Teaching the Humanities at Community Colleges and Four-year Universities

More specifically, most of my classes get filled with students who are not interested in history; they are taking the classes because they are required. My job then, is to make sure that the students get interested in the course not only to pass the class, but to complete the assignments while simultaneously learning the course material.

The first two struggles I encounter is the fact that students do not enjoy the act of reading or writing. Often, students make comments that in other courses the reading load is much smaller, or that in engineering or the sciences, they do not need to do as much reading or writing. Therefore, professors have to find interesting ways to make the students read and to make them write. Eventually, I resorted to using different tactics in my classes:

1.  To make students do the reading assignments, I give pop quizzes about our textbook readings. I also make sure I emphasize to my students that the material from the textbook will be on the exam. The students can easily get overwhelmed by the number of pages in each chapter of the textbook, and to help them with that, I have them read for fifteen minutes during class time, and when time is up, we get the average of how many pages the students have read. This helps them to see that if they read for fifteen minutes every day, they can finish reading the chapter in little time.

2.  Another way I make them read is by giving them specific documents to read in class. Sometimes, I give them primary sources, and sometimes I give them secondary sources. I make sure the class is quiet while everyone is reading so the students can focus on what they are reading. Once they finish the readings, we have a group activity to give everyone an opportunity to talk about their reactions to the reading. If there are any questions that might have come to their minds, we discuss them along with w their agreements, and disagreements. The most important thing is that they express their own perspectives to what they've just read while at the same time listening to the different perspectives around the classroom. This allows them to think critically about the material they are given in class—a crucial aspect of humanities courses.

When it comes to writing, I make sure my students write a lot in my classes. In fact, on the first day of class, I ask my students to raise their hands if they like writing. In a class of thirty students, maybe one or two will raise their hands. After that, I tell my students that in my class their hands might get a little sore from writing, and, well, I have to say it is a bit true. After every exam, I get at least one student who says their hand is sore because of all the writing. But to get students to engage in writing, I employ a few methods:

1.  For the pop quizzes I give, I make them write at least a paragraph. It is interesting to see how at the beginning of the semester students might only write a few sentences, but by the middle of the semester they are writing full pages. The questions I give are open ended so I give them an opportunity to think critically about the chapter they read for that specific week and how it relates to today. This helps them to make connections to the issues we are living with today, and soon they start to see why it is important to study historical issues.

2.  Another tactic is to show them documentaries or make them listen to songs and write their reaction to them. They analyze them, and just like with the readings, with songs and documentaries I ask them the question: Are things different now or still the same? For example, in my Modern U.S. History class, one of the documentaries we watch is Harvest of Loneliness. This is a documentary about the bracero program from the 1940s. After watching it, the students discuss it in groups and then come together as a class to listen to the points that each group discussed. The last thing we discuss is the fact that farm workers today are still struggling for some of the same things as farmers did during the bracero program. Again, making them question what they are watching or listening to is an effective way to make them think critically.

3.  My exams are another way I make them write. I do not believe in multiple choice questions, so my exams include five short answer questions which they have to answer in a paragraph, and it includes a full essay in which they have to write at least five paragraphs. In the case of the full essay question, I always make it so it is open ended, but they key here is that they have to prove their points with historical facts. They cannot only tell me their opinion; every point has to be supported. This is a learning process not only for the students but also for me as the professor because a student might bring a perspective that hadn't occurred to me before, which in turn enhances my teaching as well. To be honest, for the first exam some students struggle because of all the writing that is required; nonetheless, I work with them throughout the semester, helping to build their confidence in their own writing until the end of the semester, when the students are writing in a more sustained, coherent manner.

4.  Finally, I give them two extra writing assignments. For each of these assignments, the students have to write a four-page essay. One of the assignments is a book review. For my modern U.S history class, I assign the book to be reviewed, but for colonial U.S history, each group chooses the book, but I individually approve each book. I then give them specific instructions on what I want in their book reviews: each book review is more than just a summary of the book; in fact, the summary of the book is only twenty-five percent of the whole assignment. The other seventy-five percent includes the discussion of points like the strengths and weaknesses of the book in which the main argument the author is trying to make, and if the author is successful or not in convincing the reader with his or her argument. They also have to research the author and discuss what makes the author qualified to write such a book (and this helps them to remember rhetorical strategies like "ethos" from their basic college composition courses).

The other assignment is a newspaper assignment. In this assignment, students have to analyze newspapers and talk about how present-day news has an impact on how people see historical issues. Students have to pay attention to the language which sets the tone on how the journalist view the issue he or she wrote about. I ask the students to also pay attention to the advertisements in the newspapers because of the contextual clues that they can provide about when the event occurred or when the news story was written. The students really like this activity, and, in fact, some of them write more than the pages I tell them to, which is one of the main reasons why I give it to them.

Certainly, teaching the humanities at either the community college of university level comes with struggles. The important thing is to be patient and not give up on our students. What we need to remember is that we must create activities for our students to read, to write, and very importantly, to think critically. This approach is going to prepare our students to be successful in any humanities course they take, in any career they choose, and any life they wish to lead.

Written by Maria Schrock, The University of Texas at El Paso
Doctoral Fellow, The Humanities Collaborative at EPCC-UTEP