Spring 2014 Edition
Faculty Showcase
Linda Cirulli-Burton
Adjunct Professor, Humanities and Foreign Languages
Tell us a little about
your experience
teaching.
When I returned to
teaching after a 25-year
hiatus, I returned to a
different environment.
All the great college professors I had
experienced in my previous life were great
lecturers. I have one deeply in my heart, Dr.
Richard DelVecchio, whose dramatic and
passionate deliveries inspired me beyond
belief. Because of him, I switched my major
from French to history so that I could
become a teacher and, hopefully, be just
like him!
In the Fall of 2011, I began learning the
truth about education at SFC and
everywhere else – knowledge was cheap.
The students carried encyclopedias in their
hands. When I couldn’t answer them, an
army of them could find the right answers
(some would politely ask if they could do
that for me, since our classes are no-cell
zones). The best I could do, thought I, was
to inspire them to want to look up more
information.
Yet, I was growing increasingly discontented
with myself. I knew I was missing out on
something major as a result of sitting in on
other teachers’ classes. Some were masters
at facilitating student engagement. They
were not the repositories of all learning.
They were captivating their students by
asking motivating questions, inspiring quick
and fun accountability, creating small groups
of successful and engaged learners. In
short, they were reaching into their
students to release the learner!
So, what did you do about your discontent?
In the fall of 2013, my answers came in the
form of a series of workshops offered by
Santa Fe’s Center for Academic Technologies
which did for me what Dr. DelVecchio had
done those many years ago. An expert staff
gave me PowerPoint tips, helped me
understand the “flipping the classroom
concept,” and provided an enormous
number of ways to create active learning –
active thinking - in my classroom.
These workshops were hands-on, practical,
and taught by “new-breed masters”. I felt,
as I suspected I would, extremely nervous,
inept, and downright scared. I still am, but I