Innovation/Improvement
A common difficulty I come across when teaching Death and Dying is students’ unwillingness to deeply consider their attitudes toward death and the various influences on their perceptions. Many negative thoughts, perspectives, and stereotypes stem from our society and popular culture. These messages are delivered to us, even as children, through stories like Snow White, where death is reversible and only the evil witch dies. An effective way I overcome this challenge is through my practice of experiential learning. I use this both by creating new educational experiences for students as well as reflecting on their past experiences to fully understand how they view death and why they hold certain perspectives.
The first solution I practice is use of the Personal Death Awareness (PDA). See my Teaching Narrative for further details about and examples from the PDA. This assignment draws from students’ personal experiences, or lack of experience, with death to begin to break down any walls they built against considering death, dying, and the experience of loss. This effort continues with the first Pop Culture Discussion related to how pop culture influences children’s views and understanding of death. Many students from this assignment identify a movie or book that influenced their concept of death.
The Funeral Home and Cemetery visit is a powerful new experience for students. This assignment encourages students to rethink stereotypes they have, such as “Dying is only for the old”, “Funeral home directors are dark, heartless people”, and “The funeral home industry only cares about your money”. This experiential learning opportunity fosters students’ reflection of their attitudes on these topics, what influences those attitudes, and offers a different perspective based on this new experience. See the slideshow below for student reactions to the funeral home and cemetery visit.
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The use of experiential learning is an effective solution to the challenge of student unwillingness to meaningfully connect with course content. This challenge is addressed from the first day of class and is continuously attended to throughout the semester. This practice ensures students have opportunities to receive the most out of my class and gain knowledge that is useful in many aspects of their personal and professional lives.