Teachers Bring Passion to the Classroom

by Peter O'Malley

Every time we interview our faculty members who receive high marks from their students for their creative classroom approaches, a common theme emerges: they share a strong belief in the importance of good teaching and the necessity of seeking multiple ways to illustrate the key ideas in their discipline. Here we introduce you to five instructors who employ novel ways to enliven their subject matter.

Ivan Galantic

Veteran Ivan Galantic, professor emeritus of fine arts at Tufts University, has been teaching at the Extension School for 34 years. His professional connection with art began with his graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where he started a career as a painter. After moving to the United States, he says, "I wished to find ways of growing in my new country without relinquishing my European roots. In an effort to connect the old with the new, I turned from painting to the history of art. (But I must say that it gave me a good deal of pleasure to learn recently that one of my paintings has ended up in a museum in Zagreb, Croatia, as part of the Tuskan Donation.)"

In his courses, Introduction to the History of Art and Architecture I and II, Galantic says he wishes to remind students of "the essential immutability of the human soul and its universal affinities which have been expressed and continue to be expressed throughout all time and in all places. No one ever need feel alone or lost in this world of ours. The only things that change are form and style. I consider it my job, therefore, to help students to become visually literate so that they will be able to read those ever-changing forms."

Over the last 20 years, he has taken his students to Rome, Florence, Athens, Cordoba, Prague, Istanbul, and elsewhere to view great works firsthand. "When traveling with my students," he says, "I observe overwhelmingly rewarding results—above all, their refreshed approach to understanding the objects involved in art historical study. These students are pilgrims of a sort—as am I, their companion. We become humble before great achievements of the human spirit. And, as we all know, humility is the first step in any real learning experience."

Wilga Rivers

In Theory and Practice of Language Teaching, Wilga Rivers, professor emerita of romance languages and literatures at Harvard, attracts students from across the country and the world. "Usually there are people from up to 16 countries, speaking some 25 languages, and aiming to teach one of about ten languages. Their cultures have instilled in them different attitudes toward a teacher and a class: some feel it is an insult to the professor to ask questions, because it seems to imply that she was not clear enough," she says. "Others are nervous to speak in front of native speakers, fearing they may not be understood or may make some mistake in English."

To break down these inhibitions, Professor Rivers holds a party the third week of class to which students bring food or drink that is typical of their native country, of their family’s ethnic tradition, or of the country where the language they will be teaching is spoken. The various dishes inspire animated conversation about the food and customs of the different countries. Rivers encourages the students to speak with as many of their classmates as possible.

"I find this party makes a big difference," she says. "When they arrive early in the following weeks, they are more confident in talking to other early arrivals, and they take an active part in class discussion and in sharing their teaching and learning experiences. They are also more confident about coming to my office hours, something that is a novelty in many of their countries."

Donald Ostrowski

Donald Ostrowski, research advisor in the social sciences for the Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) Program, has taught history at the school since 1982. His courses, all of which are writing intensive, include the four-semester World History, History of the Twentieth Century, and Introduction to History through Film and Literature. Film is the medium he often employs to sharpen powers of observation and illustrate how movies can both accurately represent and distort historical events. He carefully chooses documentary film clips to show in class, such as James Burke’s The Day the Universe Changed, Carlos Fuentes' The Buried Mirror, and Basil Davidson’s Africa. "These provide excellent visual images of the places I discuss in lecture," he says, "but the students also learn to evaluate the accompanying narrative and its inevitable biases."

After class Ostrowski shows feature films on historical topics, such as The Name of the Rose, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Viva Zapata! "Most people learn their history from watching such films," says Ostrowski, "a risky business if they don't know how to evaluate properly the content presented. For example, the film Queen Christina, staring Greta Garbo, is actually a well-researched film in terms of costume and set design; Garbo herself did a year’s research in Sweden before undertaking the part. However, the film makes no mention of Christina’s conversion to Roman Catholicism, which is the primary reason she gave up her throne. Instead, the film invents a bogus romantic entanglement as the reason for her abdication." Students' papers in the course have often illuminated historical details that Ostrowski himself had not noticed, such as the implications of Brother William’s covering the astrolabe in The Name of the Rose—an act that both calls attention to the Muslim origins of that instrument and causes the viewer to question William’s faith.

George Buckley

George Buckley has taught at the Extension School since 1982 and has recently retired from more than 30 years of teaching in the Watertown Public Schools. With Dr. John Spengler, Buckley founded the Certificate in Environmental Management Program and spearheaded the establishment of the ALM in Environmental Management. His courses, Environmental Management I and Ocean Environments, aim to provide students with a "window to the natural world" and to encourage their curiosity about nature while providing a sound understanding of "the vicissitudes visited upon the environment by mankind and a repertoire of ideas about how to better live in concert with nature," he says. He has brought Ed Jamesian, the pioneer of underwater 3D photography, along with other worldwide experts to guest lecture to his classes. He also uses his own extensive collection of land and underwater images—many taken using extreme-macro photographic techniques—of the coral reefs and estuaries of Borneo, Australia, and Bonaire.

"Students have responded with marked enthusiasm to my bringing specimens to class and my invitations to join me in the field to study the environment firsthand," he says. "They gain insight into the shape and feel of nature, and, particularly at the New England Aquarium and in the salt marshes of Cape Cod, they get to see living organisms and ecosystems up close. Students enjoy being able to touch specimens that they have only seen in textbooks so I often bring many different species to class—aided now by the special macroprojector that makes images of my specimens for both the class and distance students."

Sue Weaver Schopf

Sue Weaver Schopf, assistant dean of University Extension and director of the ALM Program, has lectured on English and American literature at the Extension School since 1984. Her courses range from the poetry of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to the history of drama and, forthcoming in spring 2006, a new course on Irish literature. For each of these classes, her goal is to bring the literature as fully to life as possible, to give the students a sense of the writer as a real person who lived and wrote in a specific environment, and to re-create the ways in which the audience of the time would have come to know the works of the author. To accomplish these aims, she uses two approaches.

"Many years ago," Dr. Schopf says, "I began bringing works from my personal rare-book collection to class so that students could see what the reading public in the nineteenth century would have purchased: how the volume was bound, the advertisements that were tucked in it, the kind of paper and typefaces that were used, even the size of the volume. Students were always excited to see these books, and soon I began to think about introducing them to the working drafts of poems, penned in the author’s hand."

Schopf has arranged for all her classes a private exhibition of relevant manuscripts and letters from Houghton Library. "When students read a poem printed in a book, they see nothing of the hard work that actually took place in the crafting of it. I think it helps students realize that a great genius has to struggle with language, just as they do when trying to write."

For the past five years, she has also arranged a trip to England at spring break. She has created a series of walks that follow in the footsteps of writers such as T. S. Eliot, Chaucer, and Jane Austen. "The sense of place is so strong in most writers' works," Schopf says. "But sometimes our imaginations can lead us astray and we envision a world that would have been quite different from the one the writer knew and was attempting to describe. By taking students to the actual landscapes inhabited by the writers and their characters, works of literature become fully three-dimensional; students also learn how writers draw inspiration from real places but then rearrange and embellish them for artistic purposes."