Episode 59 - The “I” That Teaches: Kenneth Ngwa
Dialogue on Teaching, Wabash Center’s podcast series, is hosted by Nancy Lynne Westfield, Ph.D., Director of the Wabash Center. Amplifying the Wabash Center’s mission, the podcasts focus upon issues of teaching and learning in theology and religion within colleges, university, seminaries, as well as the publics impacted by these schools. Dialogues with faculty and administrators working in the wide range of institutional contexts illumine the complexity of teaching and the teaching life.
For Kenneth Ngwa, Drew Theological Seminary, teaching is not just a vocation but it’s a way of life. He confesses, “I cannot but teach.” Teaching is about a community of learners coming together to make meaning from a set of texts or artifacts. “I think teaching is a powerful tool, ” continues Ngwa, “to shape not just individual perspectives but how society functions.” He teaches classes in the Hebrew Bible and is an important voice in the field of African Biblical Hermeneutics.
This podcast is taken from the "The “I” That Teaches” video series - project that invites senior scholars to talk about their teaching lives. These scholar-teachers candidly discuss how religious, educational, and family backgrounds inform their vocational commitments and, also, characterize their teaching persona. From the vantage point of a practiced teaching philosophy we get an intimate account of the value and art of teaching well.