Showing Up

Waking from the feature-length teaching-related nightmare, I come to consciousness thanking God for preparing me as a teacher. If you noticed I did not say for teaching that’s the point. I woke with a deeper than ever, first realization really, that the Lord has used teaching to prepare me for kingdom purpose. This became patently [...]

Writing as a Contact Sport

Tom asked me to send a few lines about my teaching, the intuitions I have about embodying the writing process for developmental writers. I told him I have the conviction and evidence for what I do but not the language. That’s why I’m back in grad school after all. But they cannot help me. As [...]

Oxygen Mask School of Life

I sit in the office early on a Saturday, chugging through items not yet completed from the Spring Break to do list. I set a timer in 1, 5 and 15 minute increments to at least complete pieces of a few things. I reach the task for my ‘gradual’ degree marked ‘lesson plan’ and begin [...]

Academic Aspirin

The influence of service learning on students’ personal and social development.

Low Grade Panic

Okay, I remember to check the student email on the second day after placing it on the to-do list. I made amends with UNLV’s library on Monday and so had borrowing privileges once again but they only had one of the four texts on the shelf: Teaching college in an age of accountability. I grabbed [...]

Challenge & Opportunity

The challenge / opportunity is to do effectively more than one thing at a time, consciously. Un or subconsciously, we are multi-tasking all the time, but to multi-task consciously raises the bar quite a bit. I feel stymied when I attempt to tease out of my daily teaching life the several strands of activities, and [...]

Winning the War

There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less.” Kurt Hahn, Outward Bound
I write that quote with the intention of copying yesterday’s free writing below and uploading it to wordpress. Instead, what happens [...]