A year on exchange in Germany as a shy college student ultimately determined my future as a teacher. I was frightened at first; every cultural system was slightly different, and I was constantly stumbling into an embarrassing exchange or awkward situation because of the inevitable gaps in my linguistic and cultural knowledge. This experience – essentially, making a fool of myself every day for nearly a year – finally cured the worst of my shyness and allowed my curiosity to take over. That year abroad not only solidified my decision to earn a Ph.D. in German; it has shaped my priorities as a teacher. My first order of business in the classroom is to create an atmosphere in which students feel safe practicing their new skills and letting their natural curiosity take over so that we can all be brave, wise fools together.
I endeavor not just to engage my students with the language but to involve them in cultural exploration. I believe in getting students acquainted with “real” German texts early; this can include poems, pop songs, maps and brochures, websites, or even dialogue with native speakers. One of my most successful lesson plans for second-semester German involved a live “class interview” with a native speaker via Skype; students had the opportunity to ask him anything about Germany, and he gave them a virtual tour of his hometown (the theme of the chapter we were working on was travel and tourism).
At all levels of the curriculum, I aim to teach courses in language, literature, film and culture that not only familiarize students with a body of texts, but make them into more effective interpreters and communicators—in both German and English. A good German instructor will also teach her students how to think: to analyze texts critically, to express themselves eloquently, and to look at issues from many sides. My students write and discuss as much as possible, and I strive to make sure that there is a sophisticated, unifying theme or idea behind even the most elementary chapters. When it is time to practice grammar concepts, I favor fast-paced, communicative exercises that involve as many students as possible, especially games and drills that get them on their feet.
I find it just as important to provide students in my literature and film courses with an environment in which they feel encouraged to share their own opinions and interpretations. At Wake Forest, I have twice taught “German Masterworks in Translation,” a survey course in English which is popular with majors and minors as well as students with little humanities experience who aim to fulfill a general education requirement. At first I was worried about the prospect of teaching a course that would need to work for both upper-level German majors and potentially disinterested students hoping for an easy “A”. But we came together using a daily journal assignment in which they answered a guiding question about the text they had read. This motivated students to do the reading, of course, but it also forced them to synthesize their thoughts on a broader issue pertaining to the text in question. For example, when we read The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, I asked them to weigh in on yellow journalism and freedom of the press. The course was successful because students from varied backgrounds could relate each masterwork to their own lives as well as the historical context in which it was written. The differing perspectives voiced in our lively discussions taught my students how to look critically at an issue and challenged them to express their ideas using textual evidence. I was very pleased with the comments on the evaluations for that course; they are included on this website.
My research and teaching are intertwined, especially because the Pop literature I work with is often accessible and culturally relevant enough to use in the language classroom. In introducing a Christian Kracht or Wladimir Kaminer essay to my students and hearing their responses to the work, I get to see it in a fresh way, and their perspectives are always inspiring to me. My goal is for German class to inspire them, too, in whatever their passion is, by keeping our lessons energetic, surprising, thought-provoking, and diverse. One of my most successful classes to date was a fifth-semester German literature and culture course which I organized around the concept of “Entfremdung,” or alienation. We read a wide range of texts from several centuries which expressed feelings of alienation and loneliness, and students finished the semester by performing their own creative interpretations of these texts. I found that the notion of “Entfremdung” particularly resonated with students, who often feel like outsiders as they transition into adult life, and allowed them to connect with various German cultural topics, such as the GDR, on a personal level.
Of course, I consider it imperative that German education extend beyond the classroom and into the campus community. I am fortunate to have been part of three German programs – at Duke, Elon, and Wake Forest – that are both practical and enthusiastic when it comes to making German enticing and relevant to as wide a range of students as possible. Thus, I have acquired the skills necessary to make a German event “work,” from the creation of an eye-catching flyer to effective advertising, from the selection of hot topics for new events to the writing of grant proposals for larger projects.
In both teaching and service, I believe I have learned best by example. I attended a small private high school, where the individual attention and challenging coursework gave me a deep appreciation for liberal-arts education. As an undergraduate, I was fortunate to find a surprisingly intimate German department at a large public university: at Clemson, my professors demonstrated for me the possibilities of interdisciplinarity, passion and creativity applied to both scholarship and teaching. They were also true mentors, managing to create a close-knit, lively community of scholars and enthusiasts who remained connected even after graduation. At Duke, a top-ranked private research university, I was challenged by some of the brightest students in the country, as well as some of the brightest professors; and at Elon and Wake Forest I have had the opportunity to learn and develop the nuts and bolts of complete professorship among supportive and inspiring colleagues. Ultimately, these different environments have shown me that no matter the position, the fundamentals of good scholarship, mentoring, and pedagogy are everywhere the same: passion, creativity, flexibility, and resourcefulness.
Mary L. Knight 