Did the title of this post shock you?  What you may be feeling is a glimpse into the experience of seminary students and experienced clergy who have enrolled in clinical pastoral education (CPE) at the Center for Pastoral Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.  They have just heard my directions for writing verbatims….

With the increase in popularity of service learning and required clinical pastoral education in seminaries, pedagogical tools like verbatims are likely to become more prevalent.  I hope that these reflections will provide you with some helpful material to experiment with verbatims or some form of them in your teaching….