In this continuing series, I provide concrete dos and don’ts for a variety of writing and reading practices.
Do THIS Not THAT: Theme
How Would You Teach Aesop to a 3rd Grader?
Here was my initial try…
Continue reading “How Would You Teach Aesop to a 3rd Grader?”Keynote Address: Imagining Conversion
Why Individual Student Conferences in Freshman Comp Work
I just completed my second week of individual conferences, all of which were structured around providing feedback on rough drafts of each class’s first major assignment. Here were my four takeaways.
- Less is more. – It’s better to go over one paragraph with precision—praising its strengths and observing its weakness—than to make general comments about the entire paper. Coverage is a fool’s errand. Go for the synecdoche.
- Ask questions. – I always ask the student if s/he has questions, but when they go well, these conferences provoke my own questions. I end up learning more about who the student is outside the classroom when I listen more than I talk.
- Provide specific next steps. – Yes, each student had significant work to do in revision. I had made sure to highlight specific parts of the paper that needed work. However, I tried to give even more pointed advice about what each student should tackle next: a new introduction, a revised thesis, two new topic sentences, etc. This allowed each student to leave with clear marching orders.
- Find something nice to say, and say it. – No paper is entirely unredeemable. A draft should be messy. Find something in the process that the student did well, and acknowledge it.
The Purpose of Life: Romans 11:36
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Romans 11:36
My semester’s theme thus far has been process over product, and this week’s verse underscores it. I can easily declare that all thing have their proper end in glorifying God. It is another to navigate the process that leads to that end result.
This passage in Romans connects the entire process — the beginning the middle and the end — to Christ. Everything starts with his word. Everything holds together through his word. Everything was made to glorify him.
I don’t find it difficult to acknowledge God is creator, and I confess with my mouth the Westminster Confession’s claim that the end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is very different, however, from enjoying him right now in the middle of a work week or in the middle of a difficult class or in the middle of a grading session. It is easy to say, “Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor,” but what does that mean in the gritty details of your life?
This week, I am focusing on the process as a means to help my students improve as readers and writers. If I want my students to develop their reading and writing skills, I must be willing to give them ways of approaching their tasks. What I am praying for is a greater awareness of how God informs that process. Yes, He made all things, and yes, all things were made to glorify Him, but how does that translate into my concrete teaching and something as simple as free-writing or summarizing what I just read?
One thing I am recognizing is that there are far too many parts of the process of learning and teaching that I think I can do on my own. This simply isn’t true. I pray that God gives me the humility to ask for his guidance in every part of my educational and pedagogical process.
Teaching Reflection: Week 1
I’m continually amazed by how much truth is nestled in a short student’s prayer traditionally attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. Every semester I begin each of my classes with the prayer and have my students pick out one of the things the prayer asks for that would be particularly helpful for the course they are taking. It allows them to dwell on the prayers words for a bit longer and gives me a sense of what they think our course will be like. Last week, I was struck by two parts of the prayer and convicted by another.
Continue reading “Teaching Reflection: Week 1”What’s Love Got To Do With It? I Corinthians 16:14
Let everything that you do be done in love.
I Corinthians 16:14
Yesterday morning in chapel, we heard a powerful message on Matthew 25 where Jesus divides the sheep from the goats. The speaker’s main point was that the sheep were defined by their social love in action. They cared for the sick and helped those in need. Their loved manifested itself in concrete ways for the most of vulnerable members of their society.
As I enter this new semester, I’ve been meditating on what the most effective way is for me to love those around me: my students, my colleagues, the staff, and administration. Who are the people who are most vulnerable on campus?
In my verse for the week in Corinthians, Paul too stresses action. His admonition is not primarily about what people say or about what people write but what people do. This does not mean that writing and reading are not actions. Rather it is to stress that we should think of love as a larger category of which our words are but a small part.
The ways I have to show love typically involve words. My thoughtfulness often manifests itself in the form of notes or prayers to people to show them that I care about them and that I want them to be everything God wants them to be. I have not taken the opportunity to do anything in addition to this.
Part of this process, I know, is God opening my eyes to parts of the world that I choose not to look at or remain ignorant of. This semester, as I attempt to live out this verse, I pray that God will use the message I heard yesterday morning to make my love for others in the world a sign of God’s grace.
Why It’s Good to Feel the (Cognitive) Burn
It’s always good to feel the cognitive burn.
Today, I wanted to take reading notes as a model for my students. Not wanting to double up anything in the course, I decided to take first notes on a book I’m rereading, Augustine’s Confessions. The book has always given me problems. I’m fascinated by it, but there’s almost too much there to do anything but mark everything up: too much style, too many questions, too many scripture citations.
So I found myself in a very interesting situation this morning as I read Chapter 1. It wasn’t clicking for me. I felt confused. I felt lost. I knew that I would have to summarize the chapter when I was done, and it seemed like there were too many things that merited inclusion (or nothing that merited inclusion, I guess). But I knew I had to keep going.
And after 15 minutes or so, the reading began making more sense. I remembered passages I had forgotten about: the stuff about being a selfish baby, the criticism of The Aeneid, and his lamenting of how he used his rhetorical skills.
As the chapter ended, I didn’t have to wonder how to respond or make up my notes from scratch. I had three clear objectives: put the content in my own words, find two key quotations, then think about how the chapter connected to other things I had read or experienced. I could do that.
It was good to remember what it feels like to be confused, to know there was a simple task on the other side of my confusion that I could use to work towards understanding, and the awareness that this kind of response will be great for students to use on everything they read: from the Bible to their psychology textbook.
Why I Believe in God Part 2: Rhetorical Analysis
Last week I began analyzing the Cornelius Van Til tract “Why I Believe in God.” Each Tuesday, I will continue that series until I complete it.
In the second section of his presentation “Why I Believe in God,” Van Til addresses the cultural assumption that our birth is an accident. He addresses the listener’s upbringing in Washington DC, a city that represents freedom, opportunity, and power. In contrast, Van Til’s own upbringing was humble. He was born on a farm in Holland claims to have worn wooden shoes. His point is that neither of them was really born in an extremely foreign place but in nations that have a religious past that is distinctly Christian. Van Til concludes that their discussion about God should thus concern the Christian God. Van Til admits that he and his listener differ in their belief, but he wants to make clear that he’s not arguing for the existence of a generic deity. The God he’s talking about is the Christian God. Next, Van Til addresses how he will make his argument. He admits he cannot produce God to walk alongside them as though God were just another human being. This is fine on Van Til’s part since the invisibility and omnipresence of God are not things that would allow such proof. Van Til is going to show: it’s reasonable to believe in God. Van Til registers the listener’s response. Van Til understands this will require a serious conversation because the consequences of the listener changing his mind about God would include the way the listener thinks about himself. In fact, Van Til gives the listener a chance to leave but appeals to the listener’s intelligence: why not hear the other side?
Van Til’s argument continues to be effective, chiefly in using his own story to limit the parameters of the case he’s making to the unbeliever. He will argue for the Christian God, not any God, and he believes he case he’s presenting is reasonable in accordance with who the Christian God is. Any proof of the Christian God’s existence is not subject to the reasonableness of the listener, but to the qualities God has revealed about himself in his word. The point is sealed by the fact that Van Til gets the listener to agree to listen based on the listener’s own reasonableness. That is, Van Til has not allowed the listener to determine what a reasonable demonstration of God’s existence is, but he has gotten the opportunity to share about the Christian God by appealing to the listener’s general reasonableness as demonstrated by the willingness to listen to someone you disagree with.
Also effective is the key figure of speech Van Til uses which shows that he understands the emotional stakes of this discussion. He says the listener looks “like a man about to undergo a major operation.” The comparison is apt. As a believer in God, Van Til feels something is wrong with the listener who does not believe in God, and Van Til wants that dire condition in the listener to be fixed. But surgery is serious. It requires preparation and serious recovery time. It’s not like reading the newspaper. This gives Van Til the opportunity to expound on a truth about believing in God: it has consequences. It changes the way you see yourself, and Van Til knows that this might hurt, just as surgery might leave you sore. Van Til also knows that without the surgery, the patient will likely die, so after gaining the listener’s consent, he continues his case.