Students deserve more engaging lectures

Sitting in my Thursday afternoon class, I can’t help but look out the window rather than listen to my professor ramble on about another story that has only a minute connection to the topic. Why do a majority of my professors drone on for what feels like hours on topics I already have some sort of grasp on?

They stand at the front of the class, refer to their PowerPoints occasionally, and then, to make sure the class is actually paying attention, they ask us a question or two.

I thought this was just how the college education system worked. Luckily, I have come to learn there are a few professors here who encourage us to think differently and do more in the classroom. It’s the teaching methods at Bonaventure that need help, not necessarily the students.

After reading Managing Editor Kevin Rogers’ Aug. 30 commentary on how professors need to stop letting students coast off Moodle, I had the realization that many professors have become more like their students. They are taking the easy way out by using technology or sticking to old methods, instead of working hard and being innovative. This is a shameful trend that shouldn’t be happening.

Students need to feel inspired to learn and driven to participate in class. With technology being such an all-encompassing part of our lives, professors need to be engaging and use interesting tactics to keep us away from our phones and willing to focus on them. When I see classmates looking down at their phones, checking their social networks or reading online stories, I feel sorry for the professor. But I also feel sorry the student is so uninspired that they had to resort to this.

Of course, there are a few professors at Bonaventure who do keep students on their toes and make them feel like equals.

For example, Associate Professor of English Daniel Ellis is so passionate about the material he is teaching in my Shakespearian tragedies class that he is constantly walking around the room asking each of us what we think, pushing us to explain how we see a play’s action. He even makes us get up and act out certain scenes we are discussing.

My University Forum instructor, Maddalena Marinari, assistant professor of history, encourages us to learn from each other and lets each student be the teacher for the day and create the discussion. When I took Marinari’s World War II class last year, she also pressed each of us to tell the class what we knew of the era and gave us an assignment to create our own website on an aspect of World War II that interested us.

These are the sorts of professors Bonaventure should have in every classroom, and their interactive methods are the ones that should be used. Not to mention, I know that I will remember what they taught me because of the extraordinary means they took to make me understand their material.

Students deserve to have a great education, and our professors should want the same for us. I imagine after years of lecturing, it can be easy to fall into the same routines. But every year a new batch of students come in, so we should constantly be providing a life in the classroom filled with interesting and enlightening moments.

I chose Bonaventure because I was motivated by what it stood for in academics and what it means to be a Bonnie. Boredom in the classroom is not what being a Bonnie is about.

St. Bonaventure University’s slogan is “Becoming Extraordinary.” The classes and professors provide a large chunk of that experience, and if our professors are not up to the challenge, then we might as well adjust the motto.