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It also frames the pedagogical context at West Point—schedule constraints, learning preferences, and the value placed on practical readiness—showing how creative visual reading builds skills linked to close observation and 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classroom activity is central to this teaching approach?","Question",{"text":61,"@type":62},"A two-part exercise asks first-year cadets to cartoon their responses to a poem by Emily Dickinson.","Answer",{"name":64,"@type":59,"acceptedAnswer":65},"Why is the EN102 environment at West Point described as challenging?",{"text":66,"@type":62},"Cadets face heavy academic loads and competing duties, classes are scheduled late in the day, and many prefer answers with clear right or wrong outcomes rather than literary ambiguities.",{"name":68,"@type":59,"acceptedAnswer":69},"How does the author connect Dickinson’s poetry to course goals?",{"text":70,"@type":62},"The exercise helps cadets close-read visual signs and demonstrates their encounter with a Dickinson poem, supporting objectives around creativity, communication, and rigorous attention to 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 \nAs a college literature teacher, my goal is to enable students to create their own meaning from their encounter with a text, respecting the text’s sources, limits, contexts, and possibilities as well as their own. Fostering this creative response is among the greatest challenges and rewards ofthe profession. While teaching EN102: Literature to first-year cadets at the United States Military Academy (West Point) in the spring of 2015, I found one path to that reward through a two-part exercise that invited them to cartoon their responses to a poem by Emily Dickinson. The results not only fulfilled several of the course’s objectives as well as my own, it also taught us all something about icons and closure in Dickinson’s work. For students who were more inclined to resist poetry than to embrace it, the results also provided tangible proof of their encounter with a given Dickinson poem and the meaning they made in the process. Before sharing the exercise and its results, I will first provide some background on the unique teaching and learning environment at West Point, on the institutional vision for EN102, and on my individual experience of the course.  \nThe Students  \nFirst-year cadets, known as “plebes,” can be a tough crowd for the EN102 instructor; many new cadets believe they learned everything they needed to know about poetry in highschool AP Literature. Few come to West Point to study the humanities; despite the Academy’s  \nclaim to offer a liberal education, STEM subjects dominate the core curriculum and draw the most majors. For most cadets, EN102 will be their only literature course, taken in the spring semester of their first year.1  \nEven cadets who like to read and to write face obstacles in EN102 . Most West Pointers are bright—the majority were high school valedictorians—but they compete in an environment that often values strength and endurance over academic intelligence. I know of no other college that has kicked off the first day of classes by requiring a 6:00 a.m. four-mile run for students and three-quarters ofthe faculty, who are also members of the military. The typical plebe takes at least 18 credits—including math, information technology, and a lab science—so the reading and writing required for their EN102 homework often falls to the bottom of an endless list of duties imposed not only by their other courses but also by their companies, coaches, and military command. Like many first-year college students, cadets often prefer disciplines where they can arrive at a “right” answer rather than having to maneuver their way through the paradoxes and ambiguities of literature. To compound the EN102 challenge, the classes are typically scheduled during the last two hours of the school day, after lunch and before two hours of sports, a mid-day period when most cadets, having been up since dawn, would prefer to be napping. Success depends first on keeping them awake. Nevertheless, the “situational awareness” they are trained to develop in hypothetical combat situations depends largely on their ability to close-read visual signs. Skills learned in EN102 could one day save their lives and the lives of their subordinates.  \nEN102 Objectives and Context  \nBy the time they graduate from West Points, cadets are supposed to be able to “think and act creatively; recognize moral issues and apply ethical considerations in decision-making; listen,  \nread, speak and write effectively; and demonstrate the capability and desire to pursue progressive and intellectual development”(“Educating” 6). They are trained primarily as military leaders, and those who make it to commencement will be commissioned as first lieutenants responsible for managing platoons of enlisted men and women serving the army in various ways. EN102, required for all first-year students, sets its objectives to correspond with these lo","cbCaih5qmfJaHQsJ","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaih5qmfJaHQsJ","pdf",947120,"English","# The Creative Classroom Response\n## Background: Teaching at West Point\n## The Students\n## EN102 Objectives and Context\n## Finding Flexibility Within Constraints","[{\"question\":\"What classroom activity is central to this teaching approach?\",\"answer\":\"A two-part exercise asks first-year cadets to cartoon their responses to a poem by Emily Dickinson.\"},{\"question\":\"Why is the EN102 environment at West Point described as challenging?\",\"answer\":\"Cadets face heavy academic loads and competing duties, classes are scheduled late in the day, and many prefer answers with clear right or wrong outcomes rather than literary ambiguities.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author connect Dickinson’s poetry to course goals?\",\"answer\":\"The exercise helps cadets close-read visual signs and demonstrates their encounter with a Dickinson poem, supporting objectives around creativity, communication, and rigorous attention to meaning.\"}]","Cartooning as a Creative Classroom Response - Picturing Emily Dickinson and her Poetry | PDF",29]