Me, My Students, and Pushkin

Some of my most pleasant teaching experiences took place at two HBCUs - Lincoln University and Cheyney University.  Those institutions were also the sites of one of my most effective teaching techniques.

At both these schools, I was an instructor in computer science.  But at each, I sometimes used tools that had little to do with that discipline.  For instance, I allowed students simply to submit, as an extra-credit project, a brief research paper on some aspect of black history.  In that context, I occasionally suggested that students use the Russian poet, playwright, and political activist Alexander Pushkin as a specific topic.  Don't scratch your head; let me explain, in the same way I explained the choice of Pushkin to my students.  He represents a dovetailing of their ethnic and cultural backgrounds with mine.

Alexander Sergeivitch Pushkin

Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal,  Gannibal was African.  Kidnapped as a child, he was taken to Russia, and presented as a gift to Peter the Great .  Gannibal proved so capable that he was freed, adopted by the Czar, raised in the Emperor's court, and became a military engineer, general, and nobleman.

Most of the students who took me up on the Pushkin topic were young black men.  Several of them remarked to me that they appreciated his politics as much as his poetry.  That appreciation is where the bridge that connects their background and mine begins.