Chris R., Instructor
Superheros and CSL? Learn how Dr. Reyns-Chikuma from MLCS teaches about superheroes and CSL in french and english below!
Please trace your involvement with CSL
My name is Chris Reyns-Chikuma, I am an associate professor in MLCS at the U of A. I have been here for ten years. I started with CSL when I started at the U of A. I did something like CSL before at my previous job, it was not called CSL but they had similar options of working with community organizations. So I have been involved with service-learning work for a long time!
I teach both in French and English. French courses are usually 300 and 400 level classes. In French we usually work in French culture, in the broad sense, it could be French literature, French media, a lot of politics! In English it varies a lot and can be anything from 100 to 400. The topics are not much different from the French classes, but some are. For example, right now I am teaching a course on superheroes! It is about connecting the myth and the history of superheroes. It is very much the evolution of superheroes from having mostly white males, to now when there is more diversity. Right now we are talking about Black Panther, and other animations.
In this MLCS 199 Superheros, I have three options; one is a traditional essay, second is a creative option with a reflection, and the third one is CSL and a reflection. In this class what I ask them is: “What does a superhero do, and how do they help communities?” Of course it is very controversial in the theme of superheroes, like Batman for example he helps his community but he is doing it in a way that is problematic for the law in a complex way. Through CSL what I try to ask is, “Is there another way to help the community? Rather than punishing the bad guys, what about preventing the bad guys from what they are doing! If Batman has a lot of money, why not invest the money in prevention, rather than punishing people.” So, it all fits very well with CSL, because what I do is send my students to places like Hope Mission and say, “Okay, this is one way to prevent problems, or at least try to!”
What do you think the students get the most out of?
What I am asking my students is to reflect on the theme of the class, “What does it mean to be a superhero?” What we see is that during the class is that there is no one definition of superhero. You can have different criteria to define the superhero - the most common one is the mask, the costume, and these are the most simple ones. Of course, there are exceptions, some of them don’t have costumes, some of them don’t have masks. So we go through about fifteen criteria that define a superhero. Everytime we have five or six that are used to define one superhero that did not fit another superhero, when you go through them. Some of them are changing for example for twenty years, being a white male was a criterion of being a superhero - because before they were exclusively white males. White male was implicit, nobody would say that it was part of the definition, but it was part of the defintion, implicitly. Those definitions of superheroes are changing.
As for the students, I am asking them to define what they are doing. For example, if they go to Hope Mission - how does Hope Mission fit the criteria, and say, “Okay, they are helping the community, check. Do they have costumes?” It could be uniforms! For example the police have uniforms, nurses have uniforms, so we talk about this uniform issue and its complexity.
Have you changed the way you have taught with CSL?
I have not changed anything about the way I teach recently, but when I came to the U of A, I changed a little bit. Overall it works pretty well, but I would like to have more students choose the CSL route. Most of my students who do CSL have already done CSL, and have information about it. Or students have done similar things in high school, so they know what it means a little bit. The students who do not know about CSL are the ones I would like to reach.
I plan on changing the way I teach by maybe eliminating the creative option I give students, because I think CSL is also a creative process which I would like more students to be introduced to. I am making this change because I do not have that many students who pick CSL, and many students think the creative option is the easiest so they take it. I want more students to do the CSL component because those students learn such interesting things.
How do you think the CSL affects the student experience?
I think the CSL students love it! Most of them know that they like it and they do it because they know about CSL already. Like I said, it would be nice if more of my students tried it for the first time in this class.
The CSL students have to write an essay, instead of the 12 pages for the non-CSL, it is 6 pages for CSL students. In that essay they have to reflect on their experience, so “Was it good, was it bad, how was it good, how was it bad?” Also how it fits the definition, in this case of this class ‘the definition of superhero’. It is a reflection on the question of “What is helping society?” and “How can you help society?” Most of the time it is in modest ways, maybe it's not special effects like a blockbuster movie, but maybe it is more effective!
What is your experiences with CSL?
Personally, I love CSL. I am in favour of it. Even if I do not do it every semester, or every class - because it is more work, not much more work but still, more work. Also, it does not work in every class, because the topics can be different. I really believe in CSL, I really think it is a great tool for the University to be relevant, and to be out of the ivory tower, and for students to realize that they can do something very useful.
In my case, for example, I have only talked about superheroes, but in my French classes where I teach about French culture the students go to French school's and things like that and then they practice their French, or teach French. This is where students learn more concretely, something that they might know abstractly, that French is useful outside the classroom. The students see it as very useful.
These French culture classes are all connected to French culture. Last semester I taught a class on French, in a comparison of novels and videogames. It was the first time I taught it, but I was trying to see what are the advantages of reading a novel, and what are the advantages of playing a video game. For example, in that class it is more difficult to create a CSL component, also it is very new to me as an instructor, so it is already heavy enough!