Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is built the belief that students can read the biblical text, investigate its context, and interpret its meaning. I strive for a teaching environment that is neither skeptical nor sectarian in its approach to questions of faith. Beyond questions of content, no group of students will hold the same beliefs and interpretations of the text. My role as an instructor is to prepare them to read closely, investigate rigorously, and interpret thoughtfully. This ideal persists regardless of student ability or foreknowledge of the material.
I have adopted three core tenets in my teaching. First, students already possess many of the skills necessary for engaging the text. Second, students learn best when they learn collaboratively. Third, students should be able to take the skills developed in my classroom and apply them to the rest of the college curriculum and beyond.
Utilizing Skills gained in Other Courses
I strive to meet students where they are. When students begin to analysis the bible in its ancient context the way they analyze their own context, they sharpen analytical skills developed throughout the college curriculum and bring them to bear on the Bible. In our culture of Netflix and on-demand movies, I use film and television as analogous media for biblical narratives. When addressing the Hebrew Scriptures, I teach students to read for historical context in Scripture by having them watch Star Trek as a relic of the 1960’s. From their own culture and a relatively well-known social phenomenon (the Civil Rights Movement), they learn to read for historical cues. After this lesson, we read the stories of Genesis and Exodus, trying to uncover the parallel historical concerns of the biblical sources. This module concludes with a viewing of Star Trek: Into Darkness (2012) which uses the same characters but for a new historical context (the ethics of drone warfare and the War on Terror). After seeing how Kirk and Spock can be repurposed for a new generation, we look how Deuteronomy “reboots” the character of Moses in the era of Josiah’s reforms.
I also use films to teach concepts of canon at the beginning of an investigation of the New Testament. Students are asked to pick the three “most important” films in history, choosing their own definition if “most important.” Breaking into pairs, they consolidate their lists into one list of four. Then in groups of four they create one list of five, and lastly in groups of eight they create a list of six films. As a class, we create a canon of the most twenty-four “most important” films. What kinds of stories do we find most compelling? Who are our heroes and villains? What do these films tell us about our society and its norms? Lastly, we consider what our list says about the extra-canonical films not chosen. How might these films fit within our canon? When we define canon as what was included, rather than what was excluded, how does this affect our understanding of the non-canonical texts of early Christianity? The connection between students’ external skill-sets and the Bible is not limited to film. Similar assignments include the function of ancient and modern letters, social media projects for the Pauline mission, and literary analysis of the Gospels through Narrative Christology.
Learning through Collaborative Projects
Learning is a collaborative process. Most class sessions I begin with a group quiz covering the reading for that day. The students are encouraged to use their notes and debate their answers. This starts each class utilizing their critical thinking skills and reviewing the evidence for their positions. Studies have shown that students explain their answers to their peers learn the material better than those who only explain their answers to their professors. I also structure my lectures to incorporate at least one guided group-reading of the text. By working in groups, students arrive prepared to learn and remain engaged with the material throughout the lecture and discussion.
Collaborative work extends to larger projects. In my survey course, students create a class wiki. Each student is responsible for writing their own article and editing the articles written by their peers. The wiki pages represent a glossary of critical terms that may appear on the final exam. An additional project I envision for an advanced course on intertextuality would explore the use of Jewish Scriptures in the New Testament. (I developed a prototype for this project as part of my dissertation.) Each student would be responsible for a portion of the text, researching the myriad ways the biblical authors use Scripture to defend their understanding of Christ. Collectively, the class would annotate a public document shared on the internet, bringing the students’ research to academics and citizen-scholars. Students would develop rudimentary coding skills and facility with secondary scholarship on the Bible, while working with each other to create a resource for themselves and the larger academic community.
Developing Transferable and Durable Skills
I emphasize skills that are transferable to other courses. Like many professors of the humanities, I value rigorous evaluations of student writing. Students are given detailed rubrics for grading and are required to evaluate their own work prior to submission. They learn to criticize their own use of evidence, making my own evaluation a dialogue rather than an authoritarian value-judgment. I push them to develop a “mature prose of conventional English” by minimally marking their assignments, forcing them to recognize where they have imprecise language, run-on sentences, and misplaced modifiers. Students see marked improvement in the quality of their written communication when they are attentive to their writing. Students must develop oral communication skills as a speaker, a dialogue partner, and listener. The in-class group exercises reward students who can communicate clearly with their partners, engage in effective debate, and perhaps most crucially, listen attentively to their partners and offer constructive criticism.
My course designs mandate the development of critical thinking skills. Students are first exposed to the synoptic problem rather than the synoptic solutions of Markan priority or Q. Students explore the evidence that prompted scholarly evaluation of the sources. They explore how Matthew and Luke differ from Mark, and how they differ from each other. From analyzing the texts, students can make their own judgments about Matthew and Luke’s use of previous materials and generate their own hypotheses. By working with literary data, rather than historical models, students learn to read the primary text critically. Only after students have first had the opportunity to wrestle with the text for themselves do we turn to the Four-Source hypothesis. By developing analytical skills, students learn more than the biblical narrative; they develop critical thinking skills that promote deeper engagement with their entirely college curriculum and beyond their graduation.
Though transferable to other departments, the skills developed in my survey courses allow students to begin the journey of a theological education. Students are actively encouraged to go beyond the material presented in class. One way I do this is by giving them optional language activities to learn biblical languages. Not only does this emphasize the importance of texts and translation, it provides a second entry point for adventurous students into the depths of biblical studies and theology in general. Two students per survey course can maintain an internal Greek or Hebrew program. Two students keep upper-level courses populated and maintain departmental vitality year over year.