Along with the seminary classes I'm taking as a student and my administrator work, I'm teaching some English classes online for our local community college. It's interesting to read the essays written by my students while thinking about my own writing.
I find myself saving every scrap of seminary writing, even as I'm wondering what I plan to do with all this writing. Some of it makes sense to keep, like the spiritual autobiography I had to write for one class. But I've also been keeping my Discussion Post responses.
Those of you who teach or take online classes, you already know that the Discussion thread is designed to mimic what happens (ideally) in classroom discussions. I've been pleased to find out that I have been learning from them. My own students have a mix when it comes to creating meaningful discussion threads.
At first I saved my responses in case I needed to prove that I did them. But as the courses have progressed, I've wanted to preserve my insights. For example, I responded to a classmate this way in a recent thread for my Spiritual Formation class:
"B___, you used the term 'a seasonal faster' which made me think about disciplines in a different way. I tend to go with the all or nothing approach that several have mentioned in their responses. I wonder if I might have a different experience if I adopted a practice for a season. It would be long enough to see how the discipline meshed or didn't mesh with my personality/life. If it didn't work, I might not beat myself up over it--after all, it was only for a season that I committed."
I'm also thinking about the last time I was in grad school, back when I was working on an MA and PhD in English. In some ways, I wrote less during that degree. We usually had one big paper at the end. But in my seminary classes, I'm writing shorter pieces, and I'm writing at least one shorter piece per week. I'm counting my own discussion post as a shorter piece, but interestingly not my response, although I often spend just as much time and brain power and revision time on my response.
What I like most about these shorter pieces is that it keeps me engaged with the material on a weekly basis. I don't remember feeling that way in my MA and PhD program--it was racing from one big chunk of reading to another. We had lots of discussions, but not as much short writing. If I was taking onground seminary classes, I wonder if I would be doing the same amount of weekly writing.
This past week, I've done a type of writing that I've never done before. Here was the assignment for New Testament class: "Make 15 good observations about Matthew 5-7 and 26-28." My teacher went on to clarify:
3. What constitutes a substantial observation?
a. Something that strikes you as important, interesting, exciting, or scandalous (but note: you must explain in detail why it is you find it to be such).
b. A word you don’t understand— though you must express your attempts to figure it out yourself. Don’t just write, “What’s a ____?” An observation must be more substantive than that.
c. A key word or idea that is emphasized or repeated, or perhaps a word mentioned in the section assigned that you know to be a key word or idea for the letter or author. Again, spell out the repetition or emphasis by describing how it functions in the verses under consideration.
d. Something you noticed about the formal or rhetorical elements of the passage.
e. A significant difference noted while comparing English translations.
→ Key point: observations should include more than one sentence and must not leave me wondering what it is you’re observing. Think “substantial.”
I found that this assignment led me to much deeper reading of the Gospel than I might usually do, even though the observation was fairly short. Here's one of the ones I wrote:
(Matthew 5:42) Jesus also instructs us not to refuse anyone who wants to borrow from us. He doesn’t specify what is being borrowed. Is this evidence of Jesus wanting to create us to be more communal creatures? Is this practice to help us detach from possessions?
Like I said, the exercise made me think about a familiar text in different ways. It makes me wonder if something similar could be done for students/texts in other settings.
Well onward to the kind of writing I like least: my administrator writing of accreditation documents.
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