Trying Something New in the Classroom
After 14 years of teaching, I’m centering care, community, and collective rigor.
This semester, I’ve completely redesigned how I approach the classroom. Fourteen years in, I’ve tried a lot of different strategies, assignments, and ways of structuring class time. Some worked, some didn’t. But what I’ve learned is that teaching is never static—it’s always in motion.
And this year, I’m ready to try something different.
I’ve started calling this new structure The Reflect & Act Model. At its core, it’s a rhythm: one day devoted to reading and reflection, the other to action and application.
Mondays = Reflect
On Mondays, students spend class time reading with a guided worksheet. The prompts are designed to support both comprehension and reflection, with questions like:
What is one definition or key term that stands out to you, and why?
Where do you see this concept at play in your own life or in media you’ve consumed?
What’s one question you’d want to ask your classmates about this idea?
With 15 minutes left, they pause, pair up, and talk through their answers. They then turn in the worksheet for points.
Concrete examples of Monday guides (sample prompts):
Framing: Identify two examples of framing from your own feeds (news, TikTok captions, thumbnails). What is emphasized? What is left out?
Listening barriers: Describe a time a notification or multitasking disrupted your understanding. What changed when you focused?
Representation: Screenshot (or describe) an ad or meme. Who is centered? Who is stereotyped or erased?
This might sound simple, but it does something powerful: it slows us down. It pushes against the productivity-driven pace of capitalism that constantly demands more, faster, better. Instead, we take time to read together, reflect in real time, and practice curiosity in community.
Wednesdays = Act
On Wednesdays, we shift into the “action zone.” I start with a short mini-lecture (10–15 minutes) that frames the week’s concept. Then we dive into hands-on activities.
Examples of mini-lectures (10–15 min):
Bias & Agenda-Setting: two slides contrasting headline word choices; a quick definition + one case study.
Nonverbal Communication: stills from sitcoms where meaning travels without dialogue; a 90-second demo.
Algorithmic Personalization: define “engagement signals” and “filter bubble,” then show a 30-second screen recording of a feed evolving.
Examples of activities:
Bias in Headlines: Compare how two outlets frame the same event. Teams annotate verbs/adjectives, then rewrite the headline to shift the frame.
Nonverbal Charades: Act out emotions or scenarios without words; observers justify their interpretations with specific cues.
Listening in Action: “Back-to-back drawing”—one person describes an image, the other draws. Debrief: what directions helped? What caused drift?
Framing Studio: In small groups, students refilm a 20-second campus clip twice—one as “disruption,” one as “joyful protest”—to surface how angle, cut, and caption steer meaning.
We end with an exit slip, a short reflection where students connect the activity back to the week’s concept.
By working in groups, playing with ideas, and reflecting together, we build habits of collaboration and accountability. These are skills students desperately need not just to succeed in college, but to navigate a world that too often models the opposite—division, domination, and self-interest above all else.
How Students Earn Their Grade
The Reflect & Act Model makes grading straightforward:
Show up (attendance matters).
Submit your guided reading reflection on Monday.
Turn in your exit slip on Wednesday.
Those three steps form the backbone of the course. In other words, if students consistently attend and participate, they’ll succeed.
For my First-Year Experience Communication course, I add two larger projects that connect Communication concepts to broader skills:
Midterm Concept Application Paper (Weeks 1–8)
Students choose six key concepts, define them (with citations), and apply them to either personal experiences or pop culture examples—like how Ted Lasso models perception checking, or how Inside Out 2 illustrates nonverbal emotion cues. They also integrate at least one First-Year Experience (FYE) skill (like active listening or note-taking) and tie their examples back to Communication Studies as a discipline.
Example pairings:Perception checking × roommate conflict; FYE: active listening.
Nonverbal cues × Spider-Verse stills; FYE: note-taking via gesture codes.
Group roles × a team sport or club; FYE: time-management & role rotation.
Final Concept Application Paper (Weeks 1–15)
Students expand to ten concepts from the whole semester, integrate at least two FYE skills, and bring in one outside academic source. This paper asks them to show they can not only apply concepts but also situate them in both lived and scholarly contexts.
Example scaffolds:Use the textbook for definitions + one peer-reviewed article (e.g., on media framing).
Include 3 personal/media examples that illustrate different contexts (interpersonal, small group, mass media).
For my other Communication courses (that aren’t tied to FYE), students also complete Concept Application Papers at the midterm and final. The structure is similar—choosing, defining, and applying Communication concepts to personal or cultural examples—but without the explicit FYE skill integration. In these classes, the Reflect & Act rhythm (reading + reflecting, applying + acting, and consistent in-class check-ins) provides the scaffolding for those larger assignments.
Why This Model Matters Right Now
The philosophy behind the Reflect & Act Model is simple: participation is the pedagogy. Students aren’t asked to juggle an endless list of assignments outside class. Instead, their main responsibility is to come to class, engage with the material, and reflect in real time.
bell hooks reminds us in Teaching to Transgress that, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.” For me, the Reflect & Act Model is about leaning into that possibility—shaping a space where students can show up as they are, knowing their presence matters.
hooks also insists in Teaching Community that, “To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.”
That line has been echoing in my mind as I’ve redesigned my classes. Because we live in a political and cultural moment where public figures—from Donald Trump to media pundits—model cruelty, selfishness, and domination as acceptable (and even admirable) forms of leadership. Under capitalism, we are constantly encouraged to prioritize profit, productivity, and personal gain over care for one another.
If the world outside the classroom tells us that care is weakness, then our classrooms must model something different: that care is strength, community is power, and learning together is an act of resistance.
What that modeling looks like, concretely, in my classes:
I believe students when they say they need more time (and build flexible pathways rather than punitive hoops).
We practice disagreement without dehumanization (sentence starters, time-outs, repair).
We rotate roles so labor is shared: facilitator, note-catcher, timekeeper, vibes-checker.
We normalize accessibility (captioning, quiet space, multimodal participation) as a collective good, not a special exception.
Shoutout & Scholarship
I want to pause here and give a special shoutout to my friend Nona, a retired teacher who helped me think this through. Teaching might sometimes feel solitary, but it really isn’t—we grow through conversations with colleagues, mentors, and students. Nona’s wisdom and creativity helped me imagine what this new approach could look like.
This redesign also connects deeply to a piece of scholarship I’m thrilled to share: my forthcoming article with Dr. Kishonna Gray, “Not a Detour from Rigor”: Teaching as Care, Organizing, and Collective World-Making, which was recently selected as the lead commentary for Pedagogy. In that essay, Kishonna and I argue that care—especially care grounded in Black feminist traditions—is not an “extra” or a soft supplement to learning. It is the radical foundation of liberatory pedagogy. We write: “Care is not a detour from rigor. It is its radical precondition.”
The Reflect & Act Model is one way of putting those ideas into practice—one day devoted to reading and reflection, the other to action and application. Students succeed by engaging in the classroom community itself.
Sample Week (so you can “see” it)
Week Theme: Representation & Framing
Monday (Reflect): Read chapter on representation; guided prompts ask for one ad, one headline, and one personal observation about stereotypes. Pair-share; submit reflection.
Wednesday (Act): Mini-lecture with two case studies (news + ad). Activity: groups refilm a 15-second campus clip with two different frames, write captions, and present. Exit slip connects choices to “selection & salience.”
Week Theme: Listening & Perception
Monday (Reflect): Guided reading on perception checking; students recall a miscommunication and map their assumptions vs. facts.
Wednesday (Act): Back-to-back drawing; debrief on message clarity, feedback loops, and noise. Exit slip: one strategy to try this week IRL.
How Others Could Adapt This Model
The Reflect & Act Model isn’t just for Communication courses or First-Year Experience classes—it’s a structure that can travel.
STEM:
Monday: guided reading of a research article or worked examples; reflective prompt on the key assumption or failure point.
Wednesday: lab, simulation, or coding kata applying the concept; exit slip explains one bug + fix.
Humanities:
Monday: quiet close reading with an annotation guide; pair-share on one thorny passage.
Wednesday: seminar debate, archival mini-lab, or creative rewrite from a new perspective; exit slip articulates a changed reading.
Social Sciences:
Monday: methods or theory reading guide; identify variables and hypotheses in a news story.
Wednesday: case analysis or small data sprint; exit slip proposes a next study question.
Professional programs (business, health, education):
Monday: standards/case reading; reflection on ethical tension points.
Wednesday: role-play or simulation; exit slip notes one communication move that shifted an outcome.
Quick start kit for any class:
Make a one-page Monday guide (definitions, one connection, one question).
Pick a 15-minute Wednesday mini-lecture with one vivid example.
Design a 20–25 minute collaborative activity that produces something concrete (rewrite, prototype, role-play outcome).
Write a two-question exit slip that ties the activity back to the concept and asks for one takeaway.
We’ll see how this goes, but I feel energized to start fresh, to teach with care at the center, and to learn with my students.
Here’s to trying new things—even after more than a decade in the classroom.
—Krysten
I’d love to hear from you:
If you’re teaching this semester, what new approaches or experiments are you trying out?
What has worked especially well in your classrooms (or other spaces of learning and care)?
How are you thinking about rigor, care, and community in your own practice?
Drop your thoughts in the comments — I’d love to learn from you, too.