Despite my relative youth (31 years old), I am an old-school instructor. During my four years as an Africana Studies professor, I have trained by the mantra: the text, our thoughts, our imaginations, our voices are all we need in the classroom.
For me, it is difficult to meet today’s students where they are through our cherished 100,000-word academic books. My students are more used to the sound bites, five-word texts, 500-word blogs, 140-character tweets, short Facebook posts, and page-turning, juicy novels.
I would not jump off the cliff of reality and lament that my students do not read. They read—they read a lot of texts, blogs, posts, stories and tweets. How they read, though, conflicts almost totally to the traditional non-fiction academic book.
