Course Details

Course offered Winter 2012

Honors 394 C: Teaching What You Know (A&H / SSc)

Honors 394 C: Teaching What You Know (A&H / SSc)

SLN 14362 (View UW registration info »)

Frances McCue (English)
Email: frances@francesmccue.com

Credits: 5
Limit: 30 students

Honors Credit Type

What makes a good teacher? What conditions need to exist for learning to take place? In this course, we’ll look to literature and films for the answer. By studying portrayals of teachers as both heroes and demons, we’ll build our own theories of pedagogy and test out our notions of becoming good teachers. In films ranging from “Waiting for Superman,” “The Class,” and “Dead Poets Society,” we’ll see how victory narratives and failure narratives arise, and we’ll also look to novels, poems and short stories for fictional portrayals also construct assumptions about teaching and learning. In the end, our hope will be that you have a good teaching practice that you can test out in a range of settings.

This course is the second segment in the Ways Of Knowing sequence. Students are not required to have taken “Ways of Knowing” before coming to this class. In the spring, “Teaching What You Know in Community Settings,” an internship experience, will be offered.

Three papers, a teaching journal and in class presentations will be required.