THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100312
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 57 lines
Teresa Longo, an associate professor of modern languages at the College of William and Mary, today will be named state professor of the year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
``I think awards like this are really important in the sense that it's a way that teaching can be recognized as an important profession and something that matters in the community,'' Longo, 40, said.
Longo has taught Spanish and Latin-American literature, and cultural history at William and Mary since 1988. She says her success lies in her refusal to adopt a one-style-fits-all teaching philosophy.
``I like to try a lot of different kinds of things in the classroom,'' she said. ``Students are different, and they learn in different ways.''
That means she lectures occasionally, but not all the time. ``Some students really like to have a source of knowledge,'' Longo said, ``but then I like to go into a series of conversations with students to find out their opinions.''
She also likes to push her students to think for themselves. One of her assignments in a poetry class last year was to assemble a portfolio including analyses of Latin-American poetry as well as the students' own poems and philosophical statements.
``They had a lot of conferences with me to figure out the details, but they did it,'' Longo said. ``I didn't tell them exactly what an analysis should look like.''
Sophomore Richard Oulahan, who was in the course, first dreaded the idea of writing poetry. He ended up loving it.
``She's a great professor, and she really knows how to motivate students,'' said Oulahan, a 19-year-old from Honduras. ``Many times professors are just lecturing, and students aren't thinking. Professor Longo involves the students; she makes them think.''
As one of the state winners of the award, Longo will be in Washington today, teaching an elementary school class a fable by a contemporary El Salvador poet, Claribel Alegria. The story, ``The Child Who Went Looking for Yesterday,'' is a tale about ``trying to hang on to the past,'' Longo said.
Longo, who lives in Williamsburg, is on a yearlong sabbatical from teaching, working on a book on Algeria and an article on the burgeoning U.S. interest in Latin-American culture.
``It's a hot commodity,'' Longo said. ``I would argue that there's a kind of hopeful spirit in Latin-American poetry that the United States is craving right now.''
Earlier this year, Longo received the college's Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award. Longo, a native of Montana, received her bachelor's and master's degrees in Spanish from the University of Montana and her doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin.
The Carnegie foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., studies education issues and promotes interest in teaching. It has named professors of the year in 47 states, as well as four national professors of the year. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Teresa Longo, 40, says her success lies in her refusal to adopt a
one-style-fits-all teaching philosophy. by CNB