Teaching the Bible in Texas: An Archive Possessed? Posted on December 19, 2013 by Gregory CuéllarThree things are sacred in Texas, its history, the Bible, and football. Here the Alamo is a pilgrimage site, and High school football is almost equal in importance to Sunday church attendance. This past summer, I integrated Texas History and the Bible in a dream elective course titled, “A Borderlands Reading of Deuteronomistic History.” Central to the course was a reading of Joshua to 2 Kings side by side with Texas borderlands history from the late nineteenth century through the early decades of the twentieth century. The primary topics of discussion were the intersecting themes of empire, conquest, exile, family, gender, and violence….
Hey, Instructors: Show Us Your Essential Questions! Posted on November 18, 2013 by A+ Brooke Lester, CuratorI’ll show you mine, and you can show me yours. I have written before on designing a course “backward” from essential questions, using the “Understanding by Design” system created by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. Also here at Seminarium, others have described their own experience with “Understanding by Design.” A key idea is that we teach, not so that the learners will acquire particular facts in our subject matter, but so that they will develop enduring understandings that can be transferred into other contexts and subject matters. Toward this end, early in the process of designing or revising a course (“Intro to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible”) or unit (“Latter Prophets”), you want to come up with the “big ideas” and “essential questions” toward which the assessments, activities, and resources are oriented. These are my own, for the course “Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.”
Teaching with Meta-Questions Posted on November 8, 2013 by Jane S. WebsterWhat’s the point? Do you ever get those blank why-are-we-talking-about-this stare? Is your answer too often, “Just because?” Today’s challenge is to consider your larger course agenda and how it maps onto student curiosity. More specifically, it is time to identify the metaquestion you hope your course will answer. . . .
Teaching the Bible in General Education—2 of 2 Posted on August 20, 2013 by Jane S. WebsterMany educators bemoan the fact that students seek the more secure career paths of sciences and professions, often at the expense of the Humanities. Research shows, however, that many students are interested in Religious Studies, especially for the sake of making personal meaning. As a result, students often take courses in Religious Studies as part of their General Education program, and of these courses, Biblical Studies are the most popular. So how do we approach teaching the Bible in order to meet the needs of the discipline, General Education, and student meaning-making?
Full Reverse! The OT/HB from Writings to Torah Posted on August 16, 2013 by A+ Brooke Lester, Curator“Say, I know! Let’s teach our students, at term’s beginning, a model of Pentateuch formation that requires many of them to make a major emotional adjustment, and further involves learning the ENTIRE TIME LINE AND POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY of a thousand years of ancient Israel! Because, pedagogically speaking, how could that go wrong?” JEDP as a starting point for Old Testament study: what have we been thinking? But I admit, that’s not the real reason that I began to teach the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (OT/HB) “in reverse”…