Category: Teaching

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Slow Down

I just finished assessing and sending back a group of student papers. I never feel like the assessment cycle is done, however, until the (unofficial) window where students might email me about the grade they received is closed.

Last week, I received just such an email from from a high-achieving student who had gotten a high B that wasn’t quite the A she had wanted. She wasn’t rude. She just wanted to meet and talk about the grade. Typically, conversations like this make me anxious because they invite me to get defensive.

But I knew what the problem was. Continue reading “Slow Down”

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Teaching Gulliver’s Travels: An Integration Diary Pt. 2

Gulliver has a problem by the time his travels end, and today I asked my students to consider that problem more closely.

I asked my students to imagine the most physically attractive person they could, and then to acknowledge that out of that same body routinely comes poop and urine, that this person would, if one single millimeter of skin was removed, resemble something out of a horror movie more than the object of sexual desire.

We are able to forget this, I told them, because we have a veil over our eyes.

Gulliver has had that veil removed, and in its absence, all he can see are disgusting, sin-filled creatures, or rather vice-filled, irrational creatures.

The problem is precisely that Gulliver doesn’t see what’s wrong with the Yahoos on the Houyhnhnm Island or back in England as sin. He’s been using some other standard. And in the absence of a standard that would start with the premise that all men are made in God’s image, Gulliver begins to hate. Continue reading “Teaching Gulliver’s Travels: An Integration Diary Pt. 2”

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The Great Cosmic Story

Literature helps us recognize and get a fuller grasp of the great cosmic story: God’s creation, our fall, and His redemption.

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The Best Class

On the first day of my Brit Lit I survey, I typically give my students the following writing prompt:

08.24 Best Class

The answers are remarkable. First, hardly anyone ever chooses something that applies to their major. Second, they always mention the teacher. Third, there’s a pattern of rewriting the script: they take a class they don’t think they will like and end up loving it.

Some of those classes include:

  • A college survey of the Old Testament
  • A high school course on children’s literature
  • An AP Us History course
  • A management/leadership course
  • A high school physics course
  • A senior AP Calculus course
  • A freshman writing-about-literature course

Here’s my takeaway. A Brit Lit course can make a difference in these students’ lives, even if they never take another English class.

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The Power of Teaching

In the preface to his On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine answers objections to his intention to give rules for interpreting scripture. The objections are.

  1. People can’t understand his rules.
  2. People can understand his rules but can’t understand the scripture they apply them to.
  3. People can interpret scripture without his rules and thus say that no one needs rules.

St. Augustine says that the objectors in Camps 1 and 2 need to pray to God for sight. Their inability to see does not make St. Augustine’s project worthless. The objectors in Camp 3, however, get ST. Augustine’s sternest rebuke, mainly because their objection comes from pride. In answering their objection, St. Augustine makes clear the role that human teaching plays in our relationship to not only scripture, but the world. Here it is… Continue reading “The Power of Teaching”

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Taking Time to Listen

I had 10 minutes.

To make it to my next class that’s a seven minute walk across campus.

To collect this pile of papers on my teacher’s desk because I rely on handouts so much that it takes a flurry of shuffling and paper clips after class to get things into or the kind of order necessary to even fit inside my bag.

To erase the board that’s filled, edge-to-edge, with class comments about the play Hamlet.

To thank my colleague from kinesiology who not only sat in on today’s class but brought with him a medical company skull for our performance of Act 5 Scene 1 (“Alas, poor Yorick!”) and actually read lines as the gravedigger.

And there they were, standing in front of me, two students with real questions about the play. One wanted to know more about Ophelia. Why did we keep calling it a suicide? Wasn’t it an accidental death? One wanted to discuss the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in more detail. She had always read the speech as referring to two responses to internal struggles.

And despite the fact that I had talked on Tuesday about listening and responding…

I was short and curt with my students in my haste to get out the door.

In reality, I wanted to sit and talk with my colleague for as long as I could about what worked and didn’t work in the class. The questions my students asked demanded more from me and asked for answers I couldn’t provide in 30 seconds. So

I had the chance to apologize later, which I’m grateful for. I want students to want to talk with me after class, especially after a class like that one.

Maybe that means coming to my office and discussing the question there. Maybe it means admitting I don’t have answers to the questions they have.

I know that it definitely means I need to listen, to wait, to be patient.

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Like Little Children

A colleague gave a devotional at our faculty meeting two weeks ago that compared some of our students to lost sheep. In Christ’s parable, the shepherd leaves the other 99 sheep safely penned in order to retrieve the lost sheep, and there is consequently great rejoicing when that lamb has been found. My colleague encouraged us to seek out our students that were hurting and in need of our help.

His message resonated with verses from Matthew that I’ve been reading, verses that speak to Christ’s prizing of children. The shepherd/lamb dynamic in the classroom is occasionally apt, but it can also encourage us to patronize our students. Truly, it is more Christ they need than us. Christ prizes children for a reason different than lambs, however. When a child desires to connect with someone, they cannot participate in the the transactional economy of the adult world. They have nothing to offer. They are in need and thus picture the bare-faced neediness we must assume if we wish to enter the kingdom of God. Here, it is a good thing to be a child, to put away the sense that we can do something to repay God for his kindness or that this blessings are strictly quid pro quo.

When we see education through the lens of discipleship, we will be less likely to reduce our students to numbers, pragmatically deal with every problem by addressing grades, or even play a kind of cultural capital game where our students should like our classes because what we offer them is more valuable than money.

A student tells you they will miss class because of a funeral. You ask how they are doing but then quickly retreat to business-mode. “I’ll send you the quiz.” As if that’s what they wanted. Maybe they did want that. If a student comes with a real concern, however, the practice of addressing only assessment-related matters will quickly fail.

I need help. My students need help. That’s why we need education. That’s why we need discipleship. Let both come to God like little children.