Reflections from the classroom
Many, perhaps most, readers of Then and Now teach in one context or another. The responsibility, joy, and challenge of teaching is paradoxical: it is a complex exercise, and yet the task is simple. Is teaching a calling? Can one learn to be a great teacher, or is teaching a gift with which someone is born? What is the future of teaching, particularly in higher-ed settings? How do we teach students to love mercy, act justly, and walk humbly with their God?
These and a host of other questions face everyone who sets out to lead a group of students through a learning process. In the next several weeks, we will hear four seasoned teachers talk about their classroom experiences walking with students and guiding them as they expand their minds through critical thinking and widen their bases of knowledge. Four educators will present two posts each, in which they will introduce important issues in teaching and challenge each of us to think carefully and clearly about our own approaches as we lead our students.
First we will hear from Mark Edwards, assistant professor of history and politics at Spring Arbor University. Edwards writes about teaching the New Deal in online courses and takes comfort in the fact that students’ perspectives on FDR’s presidency offer hope for a more socially just America. Second we will enjoy Edward Carson’s post, which introduces us to the culture at Brooks School, an elite New England boarding school where he teaches as the only African American in the history department. Mary Beth Mathews, associate professor of religion at the University of Mary Washington, talks about how she engages with social justice issues in her classroom—not as an abstract idea but in response to ongoing protest movements on her campus surrounding the death of Grace Rebecca Mann. And Todd Brenneman, assistant professor of church history at Faulkner University, discusses the exercise of teaching a history of evangelicalism to a class of three students, and watching them grapple with the challenges of accepting certain positions.
