By Megan Willis
Elm Staff Writer
“I fell in love with everything French at 15,” Professor Pamela Pears said.
Her office, filled with cows, plastic foods, and shelves of Francophone books certainly reinforces that statement.
“I use the cows to teach my students family vocabulary,” Pears said. “I realized that many of them needed words beyond the traditional family unit, such as stepfather or half-brother, but they didn’t want to ask. So, I use the cows as props to teach. They become characters in my own little soap opera and the students learn essential words for the family unit.”
The plastic fruit stems from much of the same idea. Pears believes in kinetic learning, and the enhancement that comes from having items physically in the room to learn a language. Of course, teaching is not all she does.
In her private life, Pears is mother to five-year-old Olivia and married to her high school sweetheart. In addition, she is also conducting her own project.
“I am researching the marketing of book covers for texts written by Algerian woman,” Pears said. “This cover with the veiled woman is on almost every book produced by an Algerian woman, regardless of whether it is even relevant to the story itself.”
Whether teaching her North African GRW or doing personal research, Professor Pears keeps the same goal in mind.
“I want to bring a better understanding of the power of images to WC students. There is a lot more room for understanding the Arab world, and I’m okay with being a drop in the bucket,” she said.
In addition to this personal project, Pears is also experimenting with the use of technology in her classes.
“We gave all of our students an iPad. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. However, the students are really using them well. Every Monday someone presents a ‘hot topic’. After the presentation, all the other students have five minutes to use their ipads to look up the necessary vocab before discussion. We can even hook the ipads up to the projection screen for a presentation.”
While balancing out these different projects, Professor Pears still finds time to travel and write. She took her daughter to France for the first time over the summer, and her book, published in 2004, is entitled, Remnants of an Empire in Algeria and Vietnam Women, Words, and War.
And she only graduated from Pittsburgh in 2001.