The retired UNC English education professor is doing well; he and his wife just recently moved to the retirement community Carolina Meadows and are settling into their new chapter in life.
In his 85 years of life, Hennis has done quite a bit. He served in the U.S. Army, acted as a faculty adviser for the students of the fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon, started and raised a family of two daughters and experimented with painting. He collected pop-up books, 1,400 of which he recently donated to the University.
But what has undoubtedly left a mark on students everywhere is the way that he taught in the classroom.
“We have historically put too much emphasis on things like grammar and facts. We need to teach process; kids need to write and to write,” he said. “We spend too much time on testing and not enough on process. If you’re a wonderful writer and don’t write, then what are you doing?”
Hennis wanted to teach his students through action and practice. He used techniques like puppet shows to help students learn how to cooperate, to write screenplays and to understand the relationships between characters. Hennis encouraged students to learn filmmaking at a time when digital cameras didn’t exist.
“He really measured more what people knew, as opposed to how they were graded,” said Hennis’ daughter, Julie, who is the coordinator of volunteer programs in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system. “He looked for ways to make sure that kids show what they learned instead of a test. He was really before his time.”
