By Charlie Whitaker and Taylor Ware It's not the first time Lori Rogers has explored ways to innovate in her courses. Doesn't take long in a conversation with her to know that she cares deeply about her students and wants them to succeed, so she generally likes to try new things. That said, she has a refreshingly realistic view of the strengths and challenges of teaching English courses to modern students. One of the more recurring challenges is passive engagement. In many writing courses, one can almost see yet another lesson whoosh over a student's head like a gust of wind as they ponder how it all applies to them in real life. Through service-learning, Rogers appears to have found an answer for actively engaging her students more consistently: “agentic service-learning.” "It’s added another level of cognition that encourages students to really take agency in their scholarship.” Rogers smiles and is quick to explain what that means. “The biggest difference I see in terms of student learning is that much of their past service-learning work has been reflective, and that’s … [Read more...] about Lori Rogers explains her smart method for getting students to “really take agency in their scholarship.”