From my friend, mentor, and former professor Dr. Johnny Wink of Ouachita Baptist University.
What I always yearn for when I have students write papers in response to what they're reading in my classes is a weaving in words of their readerly lives with the rest of their lives. Nothing more thrills me than to see a student blend an idea, or image or phrase from Yeats or Dickinson or Dickens with something happening to her right now in the great wide world.
Mike Walker, a student of mine of days of yore, didn't write "Teacher to Teacher: Seven Teaching Vignettes of Jesus" in response to an assignment in one of my classes, but he has durn sure done what I'm always hoping and praying my students will do. He melded his reading of the Gospels with the work he does in a classroom and produced a nifty little book which reminds one of just how alive the word of the living God may be in the mind and heart of a devout Christian and hardworking teacher.
A part of the fun of what Mike has done is in wondering how he's going to apply whatever Biblical text he leads with. His applications are almost never predictable. They are, at times, even bizarre, though always, I hasten to add, justifiably bizarre. I'll say no more about them, for I wouldn't want to spoil your fun in them, future readers of this fine book, any more than I should have wanted my fun in them to be spoiled.
There's a splendid quality of the jagged, the rough-edged, the uncompleted in this book. One thing every teacher learns in his marrow bones if he stays in the game long enough is that, despite what EduNazis say about "learning outcomes," outcomes in the real world of teaching and learning are very murky matters indeed. Oftentimes the stories Mike tells are open-ended. We are left wondering what happened next, what might happen next, what will happen next, what will happen in twenty years. Verdicts have a habit of remaining out for a long time when one's in the teaching game. And Mike's narratives underscore that perfectly, giving a real ring of truth to the tales he tells us.
Reading this book has reminded me both of what hard work teaching is when it's done conscientiously and of how lucky the profession is to have folks like Mike Walker in it.
What I always yearn for when I have students write papers in response to what they're reading in my classes is a weaving in words of their readerly lives with the rest of their lives. Nothing more thrills me than to see a student blend an idea, or image or phrase from Yeats or Dickinson or Dickens with something happening to her right now in the great wide world.
Mike Walker, a student of mine of days of yore, didn't write "Teacher to Teacher: Seven Teaching Vignettes of Jesus" in response to an assignment in one of my classes, but he has durn sure done what I'm always hoping and praying my students will do. He melded his reading of the Gospels with the work he does in a classroom and produced a nifty little book which reminds one of just how alive the word of the living God may be in the mind and heart of a devout Christian and hardworking teacher.
A part of the fun of what Mike has done is in wondering how he's going to apply whatever Biblical text he leads with. His applications are almost never predictable. They are, at times, even bizarre, though always, I hasten to add, justifiably bizarre. I'll say no more about them, for I wouldn't want to spoil your fun in them, future readers of this fine book, any more than I should have wanted my fun in them to be spoiled.
There's a splendid quality of the jagged, the rough-edged, the uncompleted in this book. One thing every teacher learns in his marrow bones if he stays in the game long enough is that, despite what EduNazis say about "learning outcomes," outcomes in the real world of teaching and learning are very murky matters indeed. Oftentimes the stories Mike tells are open-ended. We are left wondering what happened next, what might happen next, what will happen next, what will happen in twenty years. Verdicts have a habit of remaining out for a long time when one's in the teaching game. And Mike's narratives underscore that perfectly, giving a real ring of truth to the tales he tells us.
Reading this book has reminded me both of what hard work teaching is when it's done conscientiously and of how lucky the profession is to have folks like Mike Walker in it.