Fiery, respectful and hard-working describe Leila Christenbury.
“She is very active at the department level, at the school level and at the university level,” said John Rossi, an associate professor in the School of Education, where Rossi and Christenbury serve as co-chairs of the Department of Teaching and Learning.
Alan McLeod, special assistant to the school’s dean, said Christenbury conducts research projects, lectures and writes while teaching students.
Christenbury, professor of education, spent last semester as a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. McLeod said because of her expertise in the English-education field, UNC asked her to assist its Department of English and its School of Education.
At UNC, she taught two classes, young-adult literature plus composition and rhetorical theory.
“One of the challenges any university has in preparing teachers is the connection between the content area and the schools of education,” she said, adding that VCU faculty members work hard to establish communication among disciplines. “The folks at UNC were concerned that they were not communicating, and so they wanted me to essentially interview all the principal players and see what was going on.”
After evaluating the two programs, she said, as she suspected they were not communicating with each other. So she interviewed about a dozen people, dug through various documents and listened to the comments and complaints of UNC students.
“I digested all of this,” Christenbury said, “and wrote a 20-page report, which went to the chair of the English department and the associate dean of the School of Education. “I assessed the situation and made some recommendations.
“I did notice there were a lot of things that UNC does that I sent back here (VCU) regularly. They have some Web resources that VCU does not have and some methods of faculty evaluation that were interesting.”
Now, Christenbury wants to incorporate these innovative techniques and technologies at VCU, she said, but so far her ideas have not received much attention.
“A lot of these things are beyond my power to put into place individually,” she said.
Christenbury reflects on her UNC visit as a learning experience that will help her in the classroom.
“I think it just renewed me because so many of my students at UNC were really well-prepared, and I could do some things with them that I have not been able to do here,” she said. “And that was refreshing for me and helpful. So I enjoyed that.”
Rossi said one reason UNC officials asked her to visit their school is because of her national reputation.
“She was the president of the National Council of Teachers of English,” he said, adding that the NCTE is the professional organization of her English-education field.
Her leadership in the NCTE accompanying her well-known publications, such as “Making the Journey,” Rossie said, have pushed Christenbury into the spotlight.
“The books that she has written are well-recognized,” he said. “English people begin to know who you are and what your talents are.”
Christenbury spends part of her time writing three books.
“One is on the teaching of poetry, and one is on helping students prepare for these timed-writing-on-demand tests,” she said
For the third book, Christenbury conducted research at a Chesterfield County high school by teaching English for a semester. These students were different from the high school students she taught in the ’70s, she said, but they were better behaved.
“They weren’t stoned,” she said of her students. “Most of my students (in the 1970s) were terribly on drugs.”
At the end of the semester, Christenbury said the 22 juniors in her classroom were not the only ones who had been taught a lesson.
“I worked very hard with (those) students, and I found I was not quite the success I wanted to be,” she said. “And I’m really intrigued by that.”
Nonetheless, Christenbury said classroom experiences differ and teaching high school students becomes much different from teaching college students.
Still, Lorraine Rand, an education-school-graduate-assistant, said Christenbury runs a student-centered classroom.
“She is very hands-on and she wants us (her students) to be hands-on as well,” Rand said, explaining that Christenbury encourages students to participate and to learn new technologies.
“She was one of the very first professors that I ever had who had us doing evaluations on Web sites and carrying conversations with each other via e-mail.”
In an ideal classroom, Rand said, that she, too, would like to have a lot of discussions and input from students about what they want and need from the class.
“I would like to emulate her (Christenbury’s) way of listening to students and involving them in the class,” she said.
As an adviser, McLeod said he has never heard students complain about Christenbury.
“She gets them (students) energized and excited about the subject matter,” he said. “She allows students to broaden their horizons. She’s got a bubbly personality and she’s outgoing. A couple of us have named her the ‘Empress of English Education.’ I can see her perhaps becoming a department chair on a permanent basis.”
Looking to the future, McLeod said Christenbury could possibly fill a role in the dean’s office or become an associate dean.
“But I think that even if she does, she’s going to be like most of us and have the first love be teaching and working with students.”
Rossi described Christenbury as the ideal colleague.
“When she offers to do something it’s always done on time and it’s done well,” he said. “I just think that if you have an opportunity to be in one of her classes you should certainly take that opportunity.”
Meanwhile Christenbury called teaching “a worthwhile profession and an exciting career. If anyone is interested in becoming a teacher they ought to come over here to talk to us.”