Praxis: The Responsive & Expanding Classroom

In my last blog on this site (the first of three parts) I reflected on what difference it could make if theological education institutions focused on formation of students rather than imparting information to them. That blog generated some interesting comments, questions, and feedback, so I thought I might dig ...

Recently a colleague shared with me the concept of “ungrading,” written about eloquently in a couple of blog posts by writing instructor Jesse Strommel. You can find Strommel’s posts here and here. (I highly recommend his blog, in general, as well as his @jessifer twitter account.) Strommel asks us ...

The day after the Atlanta spa shootings in March last year, my class on Asian and Asian American Theologies met via Zoom. We had scheduled to discuss worship and preaching for that class. But I knew that the murder of eight people, including six women of Asian descent, would weigh ...

A tense moment in my classroom captured some of the changing dynamics at my seminary. We were learning about the rise of higher criticism within the history of biblical interpretation in the United States. As we were analyzing a lecture that Charles Augustus Briggs delivered at Union Theological Seminary in 1891, ...

Teaching through pandemic brought home two basic lessons to me: What happens in our students’ lives affects their performance in the classroom. Professors are mere human beings who can only do so much before our health suffers. Both seem obvious. Surely, I knew all that even before the pandemic? Perhaps. ...