Putting Medea on Trial - Center for Teaching and Learning

<strong>Putting</strong> <strong>Medea</strong> on Trial: Teaching First-Year
LaGuardia Students in a Learning Community
William F. Kurzyna (Communication Skills)
MEDEA. I have done it: because I loathed you
more than I loved them.
JASON. Did you feel nothing, no pity, are you
pure evil? I should have killed you the
day I saw you.
(<strong>Medea</strong>, Act II, Jeffers adaptation)
It was about a third of the way through the
Spring I, 1999 semester and the first group
event of our shared classes was upon us. How
would the students respond to the roles we had
let them choose in setting up our mock trial of
<strong>Medea</strong>, accused of the murder of her children?
When we first proposed this activity, few of the
students were familiar with the concept of a
mock trial, and several exclaimed, “That
woman is guilty as hell! Where is the right to a
trial?” and “Just use the insanity defense, and
the trial is over.” Predictably, there were charges
of the idea being “corny,” but the faculty in this
learning community had plenty of experience
with that all-purpose dismissal. We were dedicated
to the interaction between students and
text that the mock trial would create.
My experience as a teacher of amazingly
diverse students has been a source of unending
inspiration. At LaGuardia Community College,
it is not uncommon to have six to ten different
countries of origin for a class of sixteen
or eighteen students. There is a need to stay in
constant dialogue with colleagues (and oneself )
about the best methods of communicating with
students. I’ve learned from these students
things about the world only a Magellan-like
global voyage could have given me. Equally, I’ve
had numerous opportunities to work collaboratively
with colleagues from my own and other
departments. One of these collaborations
involving <strong>Medea</strong>’s trial stands out in sharp
relief. It put me in touch with new ways of getting
my students to go deeper into their reading
assignments. In my early years as an adjunct
working at the college, and later when I was giv-
34 • In Transit
en a substitute line with the full-time faculty, I
eagerly embraced a constant questioning of my
pedagogical assumptions. My questions helped
me to remain fresh and innovative, qualities
especially treasured at LaGuardia. When a new
type of assignment was offered to me the first
year I joined the full-time faculty, I was open to
it. The assignment was to teach in a learning
community clustering my basic reading course
with a basic writing course, the Humanities
Department’s course in Theater as Communication,
and New Student Seminar. The students
in this cluster had not passed their placement
exams for reading and writing. As a group, the
students would take each of these four courses;
each faculty member would support an overarching
semester theme designed to help the
students integrate their courses.
My department, Communication Skills, is
responsible for raising the reading level of large
numbers of students, making it possible for
them to handle the long, complex readings
assigned in their major courses. For four years,
I had taught stand-alone courses in the essentials
of college reading, but now I was asked to
team with faculty from other disciplines to
design and teach in the cluster, “New Student
House.” Why were these students being
grouped together in this way? How interdependent
were faculty expected to be? What
would go into the selection of books to be
assigned, something I always had control over?
In an article on the strengths and weaknesses
of learning communities written from a sociological
perspective, David Jaffee lists four factors
as being the raisons d’être for the model:
First, students are likely to develop a
deeper understanding of the material
when concepts, topics, and debates that
are introduced in one course are reintroduced
and reinforced in another. Second,
students learn better when they can dis-

cuss the subject matter of their courses
with their peers. Third, students do better
when they are actively engaged in
their education, solving problems and
applying what they have learned.
Fourth, students are more satisfied with
their education and less likely to drop
out when they get to know their professors
outside the classroom. (Jaffee B16)
Meeting with the faculty team before the start
of classes, I got a sense of the potential offered
by the cluster format. The faculty in this cluster
were Gail Green-Anderson of English, who
had done the lion’s share of assembling the joint
syllabus; Lynne Alston-Jackson of Counseling,
a learning-communities veteran who possesses
an uncanny instinct for identifying the individual
needs of her students; and Deborah Clinton,
a Humanities instructor with valuable connections
to off-Broadway theater. At every turn
that semester, I was reminded of the deep, solid
support available from our faculty team. The
give and take around the table excited me. The
theme we chose for the cluster, the construction
of gender identity, fit well with the sort of
challenges I like to present to my students to
make their reading less mechanical and more
vividly a part of their development of self. The
texts we shared that semester, including Twelfth
Night, M. Butterfly, as well as <strong>Medea</strong>, were all fascinating
on their own. In combination, they
allowed students to think more deeply about
issues they considered relevant to their lives. I
left that first meeting with visions of a groundbreaking
adventure.
There was a risk, indeed, in confronting the
issues that our syllabus set before the students.
Coming to terms with gender identity, while a
life-long process, has an intensity for college
freshmen that can be overwhelming, and airing
out these ideas in a large group of peers
would be an experience needing the development
of trust in the group. Would the students
come to see the value of viewing their seemingly
unshakeable sexual identities through the
prisms of Euripides and Shakespeare? Students
often tiptoe around such loaded themes. I
admittedly shared some of their reticence in
the early weeks, particularly as cracks began to
show in the student group and cliques began
to form. Still, an adventure it was. This shared
intellectual experiment would ultimately show
that our students, who were considered barely
able to keep their heads above water in a college
environment, could creatively engage in
far-ranging discussions. Students questioned
how <strong>Medea</strong>’s female maternal nature could be
reconciled with her actions in the play and what
it meant to be able to appear in society as a
member of the opposite sex, the aspect of
Twelfth Night that aroused the most (uneasy)
interest. In a paper presented at the meeting of
the American Educational Research Association,
several close observers of the learning
community movement note that “...students
experience and develop an appreciation for
multiple perspectives; learn to use colleagues
as resources; and are more willing to take on
the risk required to tackle complex, ill-structured
problems...” (Wilson, Ludwig-Hardman,
Thornam, and Dunlap).
In addition to our mock trial, we scheduled
a performance of a scene from <strong>Medea</strong> by visiting
actors from the Cocteau Repertory Company,
who were also doing full-length renditions
of the play in our college theater. For the trial
of <strong>Medea</strong> – and the charmingly empty Jason –
we faculty decided to add to the sense of occasion
and gravitas by making our first joint
appearance before our students in costumes
resembling those worn by traditional British
barristers. My colleagues wore academic
gowns; I wore the suit I reserve for weddings
and funerals. The students were properly
amused and impressed.
As many roles as possible had been handed
out to our New Student House cohort, and
the students, in my recollection, played them
for all they were worth, particularly the prosecutors
condemning <strong>Medea</strong>. “These were her
own children, understand, and no matter how
bad you get treated by your husband, you don’t
kill them!” shouted one of the prosecutors, and
those playing the courtroom audience gave
their boisterous approval. The defense attor-
<strong>Putting</strong> <strong>Medea</strong> on Trial • 35

neys for <strong>Medea</strong>, representing the views of many
of the women students in the group, did a convincing
job of laying most of the guilt on Jason.
They launched a powerful attack at Jason for
his role in putting the tragedy into motion. Our
guidance of the proceedings from the judicial
bench helped the participants shape complex,
nuanced interpretations of good and evil, and
<strong>Medea</strong>’s place beyond our normal understanding
of these categories. This was reinforced by
follow-up discussions in class the next day. Having
our mock trial to draw upon, students
engaged in lively debate directly referring to
Works Cited
36 • In Transit
the text of the play, just as the attorneys for each
side had cited particular lines to make their
arguments.
The mock trial, growing out of faculty collaboration
and the close relationships of the
students in our cluster, was deeply satisfying
and made possible a shared vision of literature’s
complexity and richness. My fervent advocacy
for learning communities dates back directly
to the potential I experienced as a judge at
<strong>Medea</strong>’s trial, and my experiences since have
only strengthened the verdict.
Jaffee, David. “Learning Communities Can Be Cohesive and Divisive.” The Chronicle of Higher Education,
The Chronicle Review 50:44 (2004).
Jeffers, Robinson. <strong>Medea</strong>, freely adapted from the <strong>Medea</strong> of Euripides, New York: Samuel French, 1976.
Wilson, Brent G., and Stacey Ludwig-Hardman, Christine L. Thornam, and Joanna C. Dunlap. “Bounded
Learning Communities,” paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, San Diego, CA, April 2004.