Archives for 2022

When my first-year students write bad papers, I assume they are bad writers. If they don’t revise, I assume they don’t want to do it. If they don’t pay attention, I assume they don’t care about my course. Again and again, I assume that my students’ ...

“...it’s easy if you try.” In fact, it is not easy for me to imagine no grading. But I’m trying, colleagues. I’m trying really hard. I’m not talking about being finished with this spring term’s grading, though that would be nice, too. When I say, “...

My fall 2021 “God and the Human Person” students had just read M. Shawn Copeland’s excellent piece “Scripture and Ourselves: Reflections on the Bible and the Body” and were having a rich discussion on the goodness, beauty, opportunities, and limitations of the experience of being “body-persons.”[1] Every time we engage ...

It’s no fun lecturing to blank stares. As a church historian in an undergraduate institution, I teach quite a few general education classes to students who come to me ready to “do their time.” Thankfully, I stumbled upon a unique learning aid that has helped me bring to life ...

In planning a course, have you ever designed a creative learning activity that you thought was marvelous, and then feedback from others substantiated its marvelousness? But then, one or two people, naysayers, gave you a negative critique? And, rather than focusing on the marvelousness, your focus attached to your fear ...