Long ago in Peru, students ranging in age from 17 to 41 called the young Jeffrey Middents "Sir." Long Island-born Middents' first job at age 17 was struggling to teach English to Peruvians from "horrible textbooks." He did not foresee a future in the teaching profession, thinking instead that he wanted to be a chemical engineer.
It is here at AU that Middents has found himself teaching. Undergraduates fulfilling their General Education requirements can take his section of "Critical Approach to Cinema." Though he doesn't expect students to call him "Sir," he warns them early on not to take the class for an easy A.
Middents speaks from experience. As an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, he took just one film course, titled "Films of the Eighties."
"I took it as a joke in the summer. I was looking for a room with AC and I thought it looked easy," he said. "But it was a lot of work."
The course was the beginning of his love for film research and analysis. He hopes his class can change the way his students view movies.
It worked for Ravenna Motil-McGuire, a freshman in the School of International Service, who found herself in "Critical Approach to Cinema" when she could not get into the Gen Ed class she wanted. Now it is her favorite class.
"Everyone should take a cinema class," Motil-McGuire said.
Erika Langhart, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs, said the class opened doors for her.
"I took the class for a Gen Ed but since then I have become much more interested in film," she said. "I've gone to some of the free screenings he's announced and it has gotten me out of the classroom to see things I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise."
Teaching "Critical Approach to Cinema" is very different than the days of teaching English in Peru, but Middents still sees himself as teaching a language- the language of film.
In fact, many of his teaching techniques come from a course in foreign language pedagogy that he took to become a teaching assistant for a Spanish class. He often breaks the class into small groups to discuss specific topics. But the point is not to stay on topic. In the pedagogy, the key was to get students conversing in Spanish. Now the goal is conversing in film.
"As long as they're using movie language I don't care what they're talking about," Middents said.
He makes sure to leave plenty of room in the classes for student input. His lectures are not set in stone and he allows students to lead lectures in different directions.
"I like an organic classroom," he said.
Middents also tries to pick films that will generate a variety of personal responses from his students. "Critical Approach to Cinema" is not the same class from one semester to the next because Middents has a low tolerance for boredom and likes to constantly modify the course's content. He changes some of the lectures and picks new lists of movies that provide examples of contemporary and classic Hollywood, as well as independent and foreign films.
Middents primarily considers himself to be a researcher, saying his film research extends beyond the academic to the personal. Going to see a movie in the theatres and practicing analytical skills is an important aspect of the course for Middents. He described limiting film analysis to the classroom as "fake."
Students pick up on this element in Middents' teaching of the class, particularly because of the free film passes Middents gives out.
"He wants to give us the resources to watch more movies and better movies," Motil-McGuire said. "We learn the material here in class, but then he has us go out and apply the tools we learn in class."
Middents sends his students out into the cinema world but he also emphasizes that the rest of the world is tied into an understanding of film.
"I like that film is so interdisciplinary. You have to bring in everything around it," he said.
Middents says he is drawn to that same element in "Third World Literature," another General Education course he will teach next spring. The class requires students to read the literature in political, economic and cultural contexts.
"A lot of what I teach is in that middle ground," he said. "I like to put students in unfamiliar places and see what they make of it. That is education in and of itself."
That middle ground will likely be found in a new place each time. As with "Critical Approach to Cinema," Middents is changing "Third World Literature" from last spring's course and replacing about half the books. He said that he likes when no one in the class has read the books before.
"I don't go for standards," he said.
