Anyone taught Kant before?

So, I'm heading into my third class on Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals next week. We're taking it section by section. The first class, they were relatively intrigued by his attempt to develop a moral philosophy grounded entirely in reason and judged entirely by intent (basically the first section). Yesterday, though, when we go to how to formulate moral decisions from reason, they were entirely dead. Almost no interest.

If anyone's taught it before, were there any teaching strategies/class activities that got your students engaged with the text? These are pretty bright kids, so they can handle the material, but I fear next weeks class could be really dead without something to wake them up.

 

Boy, my first post in this thread was written in a moment of dispair. I think that class was the longest hour and twenty minutes of my life.

The final day went better. We did some hypotheticals (in groups, bless whoever came up with in-class group work) that forced them to work through the Formula of Universal Law and Formula of Humanity in a systematic way. Doing that allowed critiques of Kant that went a little deeper than, "His ideas are unrealistic." Judging from their papers, they ended up understanding some of the important things, while not advancing their critiques much farther than the "unrealistic."

We're so past Kant now, we've moved through Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground) and are doing Nietsche this week. I, of course, am counting the days until break next week. Just 5 total classes left...

 

My understanding, and I'm far from an expert, is that Critique of Pure Reason emerges from his thinking in the Grounding for a Metaphysics of Morals, the first two sections of which are fairly accessible, the third, less so, IMO. So you might want to read Grounding first. It's shorter, in any case.