Ellen Francese

"My role as teacher is to be a facilitator. I don't lecture; I don't like it, and I can't imagine my students would like it, either. My role is also to create a safe environment for my students to take risks, open up, share their ideas, and believe that what they have to say is worthy. To start a discussion I'll show them something as a catalyst, maybe lead them off with a word or two, then say, 'Here you go; wrestle with it,' and sit back and watch. And that's really how it should be."

"Interconnectedness is really the crux of what I teach. I always try to connect music to what we're studying in College Writing I and II. An essay or story, for example, is similar in process, intent, and purpose to a musical composition. We talk about thinking of the audience as we write, about the 'tone' of a piece, and about creating rhythm through the variety of sentences."

"In Writing I, we study nonfiction and literature, which I relate to music and art to show that music is just one piece of culture. When we study music, art, essays, and stories created during World War II, for example, we look at everything through the lense of what was going on for each artist at that time. Students become more aware of who they are as artists and what influences them. More than anything else, I want students to be able to make those connections."

"I also want my students to be able to look at a subject from different points of view. In a recent class, for example, students read aloud the thesis statements they wrote in a comparison of two works of literature. As everyone listened to each other's statements, I heard comments like, 'Wow, that's a completely different angle from what I saw.' You have to 'walk around' something and see it from all angles to be able to say you understand it."