A Quiet Place

My little girl. Doing one of her favorite things.

The Prayer Appointed for the Week - Monday Nearest May 18th

Almighty and merciful God,
in your goodness keep me, I pray,
from all things that may hurt me,
that I, being ready both in mind and body,
may accomplish with a free heart those things which belong to your purpose;
through Jesus Christ my Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Spring Semester - Done!

Today is the last day of Spring semester. It sure feels to have everything completed! You can see a picture of the task board in my office from this morning, which had most of the classwork tasks in the "To Do" column for such a long time.

The only task remaining now is to drive to Seminary this afternoon, hand in all my hard work, and start to relax a little.

Focusing the Message: Teaching for Life Change

According to chapter 8 of Creative Bible Teaching, I should “…focus on helping learners bridge the gaps between the world of the Bible and the world of the student.”[1] In other words I need to develop the teaching idea by asking myself, “What do I want the students to learn?” The way to do this is to:

1. Begin with the bridge principle – the truth that the author of the passage intended the original hearers or readers to understand
2. Consider the student
3. State the pedagogical idea – the truth that the teacher of the class wants the students to understand from the passage

The second step is to develop the lesson aims by asking myself, “How do I want the student to change?” One tool that has been particularly helpful to me in this is Bloom’s three domains of learning. These are highlighted in the following table.

Bloom’s Three Domains of Learning
			Acts 2:37	Associated Aim
Cognitive	Thinking and knowing	“Head”	When the people heard this,	Content
Affective	Values and attitudes	“Heart”	They were cut to the heart…	Inspiration
Behavioral	Actions and skills	“Hands”	And said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”	Action

The key is setting action aims that speak to what the student will do or how the student will change as a result of the learning experience.[2] With that in mind, the book lays out four criteria for constructing worthwhile aims:

1. Short enough to be remembered
2. Clear enough to be meaningful
3. Specific enough to be achieved
4. Written in terms of the student

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[1] 132.
[2] 141.

Focusing the Message: Truth into Life – Part II

Chapter 8 of Creative Bible Teaching goes on to describe 5 Levels of Learning Transfer, with the contention that: “Creative Bible teaching is teaching to constantly raise students’ levels of learning toward realization”

The five levels of learning transfer given in the book Creative Bible Teaching are as follows:

1. Rote: ability to repeat without thought of meaning
2. Recognition: ability to recognize biblical concepts
3. Restatement: ability to express or relate concepts to biblical system of thought
4. Relation: ability to relate Bible truths to life and see appropriate response
5. Realization: actualizing response; to apply biblical truths to daily life

And, in terms of the teaching emphasis, here is what the book lays out:

1. Facts – basic but insufficient: Rote, Recognition
2. Meaning – in terms of worldview: Restatement
3. Meaning – in terms of life experience: Relation, Realization

The authors work through each of the learning levels and explain how each level leading up to the highest – the Realization level – is necessary but not sufficient for teaching. The Realization level:

“…is the goal of all Bible teaching: realizing, in the sense of making real in experience. Here is truth, applied in life… This is the level for which every Bible teacher vaguely hopes, but for which he must consciously teach…The Bible teacher must teach in such a way that his students, understanding the truth of God, discover and are led to make an appropriate life response to the God who speaks to them through His Word. Only when God’s work is learned in this way can God’s Word transform.”[1]

Creative teaching – “…consciously and effectively focusing on activities that raise the student’s learning level.”[2] Unfortunately, according to the authors, there is evidence that the Recognition level “…is the level at which many Sunday school students learn Bible truths.”[3] What this means is that most Sunday school students never even gain the ability to express or relate concepts to a biblical worldview (Restatement), let alone develop a deep biblical worldview and relate that to their daily life (Relation and Realization).

As the authors point out, even at the restatement level:

“Learning characterized by this ability is significantly different from the teaching that takes place in most of our Sunday schools. Too many of us are satisfied to check and see if our students recognize the truths we’ve taught. Too few of us consciously seek to help students achieve mastery of the teachings of God’s word.”[4]

In order to move students to higher levels of learning, the teacher must ask “probing questions that force attention to meaning…And then you hear students talking, discussing, testing their ideas, exploring until the meaning of God’s words becomes clear and relevant to contemporary life… the dividing line is not the use or nonuse of methods. The dividing line is focus. The creative teacher finds time for a thorough exploration of the meaning of the truth taught.”[5]

This active process of discovery is critical, since “...to move up even to the restatement level of learning, students must be led beyond listening. They must personally think through the meaning of Bible truths. They must toss ideas around in their own minds to formulate and express them in their own words. For this kind of learning, the students have to participate, to express their own ideas and their own insights… The creative teacher makes sure that his students take an active part in exploring meaning.”[6]

The Non-Creative Teacher

According to the authors, the methods of a non-creative teacher have two characteristics:

1. They are designed merely to communicate content, and
2. They are primarily teacher activities.

This describes accurately most of the teaching that I have done in the past. May God redeem me from that and allow me to become the teacher that he would desire me to be.

The Creative Teacher

Now I want to be focused on the students and their learning. I want to create student-centered activities that engage student thinking. I want to serve as a guide to learning and strive constantly to structure situations that will stimulate my students to discover meaning. I should use methods that are chosen to focus attention on meaning and create student involvement in this process of discovery.”[7]

In summary:

“...creative Bible teaching…is teaching the Bible in ways that cause learning on the significant levels of restatement, relation, and realization. To cause this kind of learning the Bible teacher must (1) focus on the meaning of the Bible truth taught, (2) involve his students in active search for meaning, and (3) stimulate and guide his students in this discovery process.”[8]

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[1] 126.
[2] 127.
[3] 123.
[4] 125.
[5] 128.
[6] 128.
[7] 129.
[8] 129.

Focusing the Message: Truth into Life - Part I

Chapter 7 of Creative Bible Teaching starts with this bold statement:

“Education is based upon an assumption that what is learned in the classroom can and should be applied outside the classroom. By definition, learning requires that the student be able to meaningfully transfer a concept from one setting to another. But the transfer of truth from one situation to another is not automatic. Effective teachers know this. They know that there is a difference between parroting answers and transferring those facts into life scenarios.”[1]

I think that I am probably good at getting my students to the “parroting answers” stage, but have had limited success in getting them to transfer the facts I teach into their life scenarios. Maybe I am being too hard on myself. But I strongly suspect that any life-application that has occurred has been in line with my intentions, but in spite of my execution.

This is the one that really gets me:

“Too often we equate knowing what the Bible says with knowing God…When a Sunday school teacher merely teaches the Bible as content, he implies that to know about God and to know God are the same… There is a profound relationship between knowing about God and knowing God, but it’s a relationship over which many stumble. Information about God and from God, applied to and responded to in daily life, leads to a growing knowledge of God.”[2]

So am I implying that to know about God and to know God are the same? It is certainly not intentional, so I plead guilty as charged. And it is certainly no excuse or consolation that so are most other Sunday school teachers. I think that is what has been modeled, and so that is not only what everyone does, but also – sadly - what everyone expects.

On the subject of how to structure the content, the book says that: “Creative Bible teachers understand this principle of learning: Learning most powerfully transfers and transforms when the material taught has meaning to the student’s life and experience.”[3] They go on to say that “…a basic principle of learning and, therefore, of teaching – order and structure give meaning to information and ideas…for students to learn a concept, some sense of structure and order is important. Random ideas are not retained and transferred to life as well as ordered concepts.”[4] I think I do a reasonable job of selecting and working through the material in a way that at least communicates the facts and ideas. But I do need to devote more attention to structuring the content so that it is memorable and easily digestable.

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[1] 113, [emphasis mine].
[2] 114, [emphasis mine].
[3] 115.
[4] 115.

Focusing the Message: Student Needs

The second part of the book is concerned with focusing the message, and starts with an emphasis in chapter 6 on understanding and assessing student needs.  This emphasis was a new idea for me, since I have always assumed that I would communicate the content, and the students would work out themselves how the content meets their own needs.

But, as the authors say:

“By understanding your students you will also avoid the common pitfall of Bible teachers – teaching lessons rather than teaching students. Creative Bible teachers are student aware. They know that the content counts, but it is students that they teach… Some teachers focus on the content they desire to cover in the class as the primary factor in teaching. Creative Bible teachers do not. They recognize the necessity of teaching the truth of the Bible and the importance of strong content, but they also know that they teach students, not lessons. Student needs and student learning are a priority. Creative Bible teachers see themselves as a link between the content and the student. By knowing and caring for their students, they are able to connect the content in meaningful ways with students’ lives.”[1]

I am not inclined to be a very empathic person, and every Myers-Briggs test I have ever taken has labeled me an INTJ (think Picard from Star Trek TNG!). Introverts really have to go out of our way to get to know anyone, let alone a whole class full of people. One description of an INTJ goes so far as to say: “INTJs spend a lot of time inside their own minds, and may have little interest in the other people's thoughts or feelings.”  And while who I am is certainly not defined by any personality profile, this certainly feels true for me a lot of the time!

So this book issues a strong challenge for me: “Do you see each member of your class as individual persons, or do you see them as a collective, a class, a group only? How well do you know and understand your students? Do you know their names, interests, concerns, and needs?”[2] I would have to answer that I will really need to work outside of my comfort zone in getting to know my students and their needs, since this is not something that comes naturally for me.

This is following Jesus’ example, since “Jesus recognized the basic educational principle that the student’s needs, interests, and readiness determines what is to be taught and how it is to be taught.”[3]

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[1] Pp. 108-109 [emphasis mine].
[2] Ibid, 105.
[3] Ibid, 94.

The Goal of Bible Teaching

The book Creative Bible Teaching argues that:

“The student is at the heart of the teaching-learning process. The ultimate objective in teaching the Bible is not Bible knowledge, though that is very important; it is applied Bible knowledge in the student's everyday life.”[1]

I think that I have always agreed with this statement, but have never really known how to accomplish it in the teaching that I have done. It has seemed like an admirable – but somehow unattainable – goal. Maybe I have thought this because I am a part-time teacher, and thus don’t have the time resources available to improve my skills to the kind of level that would make such a goal possible. Or maybe I just thought that I don’t have the innate teaching “chops” for this goal, even if I had the time to improve my skills.

Most of the teaching I have experienced has either been the lecture-format “cognitive dump” style, or the inductive Bible study approach where it feels like everyone is always sharing their ignorance. Neither of these seems to get anywhere close to the goal – either falling into the ditch of good content with no meaningful application to my life, or tumbling into the opposite ditch of sharing personal applications and off-the-cuff ideas that lack any meaningful connection to the content.

So while I would have agreed in principle that, “The task of the creative Bible teacher is to make the biblical material meaningful to the contemporary learner”[2] and aimed for that in my teaching, I have generally thought that perhaps it is just too hard and maybe something that the Holy Spirit is responsible for rather than me.

Creative Bible Teaching not only contends that this goal is attainable, but actually provides the resources and tools to accomplish it. The first part of the book is concerned with the foundational step - how to study the Bible. It also includes valuable discussions of the need for and nature of the Bible, as well as the message and role of the Bible. This section of the book ends with an excellent sample Bible study to show how a well-informed inductive method can work. The remaining sections of the book are on focusing the message, structuring the lesson, teaching the class, and evaluating the results.

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[1] Creative Bible Teaching, 94.

[2] 116.

Teaching to Learn

In the past in my teaching I have focused primarily on content, and the communication of that content to a class. Being an analytic learner, I have always tended to spend most of my time researching and studying the material that I intend to teach. Then I have selected the things that I think are important to convey, and for the lesson take the class through the material in a way that seems to make sense to me. I have tried to make it interesting for the class, and have usually included some kind of general application at the end in the hope that the students will be impacted by what they have just heard and be able to apply it to their lives. This has typically been my approach.

I have learnt much, but perhaps three of the most significant things I have learnt from Creative Bible Teaching can be summarized as follows:

1. Teaching is not primarily about the teacher, but about the needs of the student and what the student learns.

2. It is the responsibility of the teacher to strive for application of the material and change in the life of each student.

3. The best lessons will have flexibility within a well-defined approach to the lesson plan structure.

Learning to Teach

This semester at Denver Seminary I have been taking two classes focused on making me a better teacher: Teaching Practicum and Mentored Academic Professional Development. The first is taught by the Department of Educational Ministry, and is intended (according to the syllabus) to instruct “in the art and skill of communicating the Bible in a classroom teaching style with the purpose of facilitating the learner’s spiritual nurture.” The second class is my final mentoring class, and is therefore a self-directed learning project where I have focused on improving my lesson planning skills.

I took both classes online, so that I could combine the class requirements with the adult Sunday school class on the gospel of Matthew that I teach from 9am-10am each Sunday. I love teaching this class – I have the best group of learners anyone could hope for - and it has been a great way to develop as a teacher for my The Light of Christ Anglican Church community. My students have been very supportive and encouraging and are a joy to teach.

As part of my course requirements I have read the book Creative Bible Teachingthis semester. This book has dramatically changed the way that I think about teaching and I am seeing that it is helping me become a better teacher as I have started putting it into practice. I will work through the book here, highlighting things that have stood out as important to me.