teaching^(4/2)

How to offer bible lessons

I’ve been so intimidated at the prospect of teaching my children about Jesus and the Bible. There are so many facets to consider: age-relevant methods, following their interests, not overloading them with instruction, choosing a topic, where to learn together, etc. One of the resources I’ve borrowed from a friend (thanks Natalie!) called Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious Education by Jerome Berryman has been a useful tool to organize my priorities and envision how a lesson might play out.…

Choose your analogy carefully

The analogies one uses to describe their work disclose important aspects about how they view one’s craft. These analogies then shape the tools which are created and dangle on one’s toolbelt. Two of my favorite analogies, teaching and pottery share the same goal of undermining the development-as-bricklaying mindset around which many development tools have organized. The brick-laying analogy (and the managerial mindset that software is “built”) has created tools which don’t fit the work.…

How to be an adult

Artur Piszek describes the situation of many adults in the United States, 💬 We are all sure everybody else has [adulting] figured out while being too ashamed to admit we could use a few pointers ourselves. Artur Piszek Are We Cursed By Specialization? His heading, “Modernity Likes the Helpless You” is partly true but, while I admit that “greas[ing] the wheels of commerce” is a factor, the modern shift to specialization is driven by more than capitalism.…

Great teaching helps a people to see a wider horizon

Great teaching helps a people to take a long view, to see a wider horizon. Boromir sees only Minas Tirith; he is representative of the great majority of people who are staunchly committed to their own tribe but have little capacity for understanding the bigger picture. If an advantage for their own group appears, it must be a gift from God; so goes the logic.

How to enforce obedience

I received this thoughtful question in response to a log about obedience and independence. 💬 Since God places such a high value on children learning to be obedient to their parents, why would parents, especially Christian parents, want to deprive their kids of this in their upbringing? The idea that this will somehow stunt a child's development into adulthood would mean that God doesn't know what's best for kids. Anonymous…

On the next day their (1) rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead–by him this man is standing before you well.…