We are all co-learners!

Good Tuesday afternoon! I just arrived here at the seminary where we teach, el Instituto Superior Ecuménico Andino de Teología - ISEAT, is its name. Being Lutheran professors here is part of our call to work with and serve the Bolivian Evangelical Lutheran Church. As I may have mentioned before, we started teaching here in January of 2010 and have plans to continue here as long as we´re serving in Bolivia.

One of the neat things about being able to teach, having just come out of seminary (LSTC) in 2009, is that I still remember what it was like to be a seminary student. The majority of my students are around my age 18-45 and come from a variety of faith traditions and churches. About half are Roman Catholic and the other half are a blend of Protestants (Methodists, Lutherans, Evangelicals, etc.) Most of them are second career and are taking classes at ISEAT at night during the week. This often mean that they arrive to my class tired, hungry, thirsty and not in the mood to hear an hour and a half long lecture.

The first class I taught here in 2010 was Church History 1: from the founding of the Christian Church to the dawn of the Reformation. Yes, that meant that I had to cover 15 centuries in 12 weeks...if you think it is impossible, it´s not, just hurried. I first taught as I had been taught, which seems only natural. I lectured and they listened...for that was the way I had learned. However, I quickly realized that when students are bored out of their mind, they are less apt to learn... go figure. Also they didn´t read the assigned readings nor turn in homeworks, papers, essays and what they did turn in was often plagiarized. So I asked them what was going on. They told me I was giving entirely too much work for them to realistically do in their free time. Ah, I remembered uttering those words to my friends in seminary...why was it that each semester we started classes we were already 300 pages behind in our readings?

Luckily, I had a live-in professor in Bolivia who taught me to navigate the new, uncharted waters of methodologies and pedagogy. Now remember that I am a trained biochemist and pastor...not necessarily a teacher or seminary professor. So I had a thing or two to learn and thanks be to God, Kari taught me everything I know as a teacher-professor. She taught me about effective lesson plans that should guide the lesson, not make it rigid and inflexible. She taught me about objectives and how to create assessments to make sure I had reached my teaching goals. She taught me how to have fun with my students and be dynamic and spontaneous.

Now being in my second year as a seminary professor, every class I teach is half dynamic which means I have created and incorporated activities (most with movement) that make the subject matter apply to the daily lives and situations of my students in their real contexts. This may seem impossible, but it makes learning more fun...go figure. So now, my seminary professor colleagues here are asking about mine and Kari´s teaching methodologies because they have heard from our students that they´re staying awake in our classes and having fun while learning. Some dynamics I use in teaching Church History, New Testament, Worship and Liturgy and Greek 1 are: thematic games, small group work, large group work, presentations, plays-skits, art projects, personal investigations, DVDs, YouTube videos, races, candy, etc. Also, their exams, tests and quizzes always have a part that asks them to apply a specific theme to their daily context or rather relate to said theme from their context. This is how I wish I had experienced theological education in seminary. I know that my experiences teaching here in Bolivia are helping to shape and form the professor I one day hope to be.

This quarter I´m teaching Worship and Liturgy and Greek 1. Two completely different subjects that, in my opinion, are very practical subjects. For me, this means that everything we learn, discuss, watch must have some real life connector that makes it applicable. And I have stuck with this teaching methodology and/or philosophy because my students have responded positively to me as their professor on the end of quarter evaluations. As I continue teaching and experimenting with adult-learning in higher theological education, I have plans to incorporate even more popular education and dialogue education models than I have been using thus far. As I believe and tell my students, "In this class we are all co-learners, the only difference is that we´re learning different things from one another."

So my questions for you blog readers are: how do you teach someone else something? do you think we learn things for the purpose of teaching/training someone else? do you think learning should be free for everyone? if you teach, how have you changed your teaching methods over the years? how have you learned to incorporate the students´ voice more in the learning event? Thanks be to God for learning and teaching!