Philosophy of Teaching

When introducing students to the academic study of the New Testament, I bring diverse interpretive approaches into conversation with the lived traditions in which the text has played and continues to play a vital role. Through scaffolded assignments and in-class activities, I train students to practice literary analysis, historical study, intertextual analysis, theological interpretation, and the study of reception history. Through readings, lectures, and discussion, I help them to encounter interpreters from a range of social locations and to consider how competing interpretations matter practically. Recognizing that students arrive with a variety of relationships to the NT, I model a posture of faith seeking understanding, within which differences of judgment and unresolved questions are allowed to stand with honesty, humility, and charity. As I foster a classroom environment in which diverse students learn from and with each other, I encourage them not only to gain factual knowledge about the NT and technical skills for interpretation but also to grow in the love by which biblical interpretation ought to be measured.

The Telos of Teaching

Theological education finds its telos in the shaping and reshaping desires as we seek to understand the truth in conversation with diverse interlocutors—past and present, inscribed in texts and enfleshed in living communities, locally and elsewhere. As a scholar-teacher of NT, I orient my pedagogy around St. Augustine’s insight that proper understanding of Christian Scripture becomes evident in the upbuilding of the twofold love of God and neighbor (see On Christian Teaching, as well as Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:37–40 and par.; Gal. 5:14; James 2:8). Because God is the Creator and the source of all truth, loving God entails rigorous intellectual work. I accordingly structure assignments and class time so as to lead students into greater understanding of course content and facility with technical skills. However, because love of God also entails obedience, not least to the command to love others as we love ourselves, such skills must be supplemented with more holistic formation in virtues such as humility, perseverance, and an other-oriented posture. To this end, my course design, readings, and assignments promote charitable-critical listening across lines of difference, self-involving engagement with the biblical text, and the sort of active learning that primes students to respond to the text in their wider lives.

Though I recognize that some students will not share my theological convictions about Scripture, I craft syllabuses and order classroom time with the aim of cultivating the love toward which, I believe, Scripture draws us when it is rightly understood. As Willie James Jennings emphasizes, this love is necessarily particular, concrete, and local: fostering love therefore requires awareness of my students’ and my own social locations and theological commitments, our institutional and geopolitical contexts, and more. Through the various pedagogical strategies described below, I seek to create a classroom in which diverse members of the learning community participate as whole people in formative learning that expands our capacities for critical thinking, effective communication, and charitable interaction.

Pedagogical Methods & Evaluation

I take a multilayered approach to presenting material in order to deepen student learning, develop reading skills, reinforce content, and accommodate students’ diverse backgrounds and learning needs and preferences. Pre-class readings provide initial information on a topic, while in-class activities consist of a mixture of lecture, discussion, and active-learning assignments involving summarizing, applying, and evaluating the information/skills covered. To support student attention, I use PowerPoint presentations to outline the day’s plan, contextualize a topic, and capture key points or questions for discussion. For lecture-heavy or technical classes, I sometimes provide an outline to guide notetaking.

Building on my graduate work and early teaching in an English department, I scaffold written assignments to help students develop a robust toolkit for reading the NT well. For example, when teaching an undergradaute introductory NT course, I required students to complete short essays aimed at honing particular skills, whether reading a passage in light of historical research, interpreting a pericope with attention to its literary context, analyzing the role of HB/OT allusions in a NT passage, or putting one’s own theological interpretation of the text into conversation with that of diversely situated others. Similarly, I had hermeneutics students complete smaller assignments in which they practiced specific methods/approaches in relation to a passage that would be the focus of their final exegesis paper.

To facilitate lasting learning, I incorporate various forms of retrieval practice into my courses. In New Testament Criticism (a historical survey of NT scholarship), I combined quizzes that require basic recall with presentations that involve reexplaining and offering discussion questions on a topic/thinker. In exegesis courses, retrieval practice tends to be more organically collaborative, as students join me in noting connections to passages covered previously. For lecture-based courses, retrieval practice involves both assessment (e.g., exams) and lower stakes, in-class activities that require students to explain a concept to an imagined interlocutor or to practice a skill in relation to a particular passage.

Particularly in larger classes, I sometimes ask students to free-write individually in response to the latter sort of prompt and then to share with a partner or small group prior to our whole-class discussion. This allows students to receive positive reinforcement and correction from a smaller set of peers, building the confidence of those initially hesitant to speak up. The peer-to-peer instruction that occurs in such small groups also facilitates pedagogically useful self-explaining. Further, in certain cases, peers are able to provide specific kinds of formative encouragement that I cannot as easily impart, given my own social location and the power dynamics of the classroom. 

Through all of my teaching, I am committed to stimulating reflection on the intersection of course material and students’ lives. For example, in exegesis courses, assignments leading up to the final paper include a section on theological-ethical themes. In some cases, I have also assigned a "reading journal" that requires students to practice different devotional approaches with sections of the book(s) on which the class is focused. My course on “Joy and the Good Life” featured a Psalms journal assignment, in which students read Athanasius and Ellen Davis on praying the Psalms and then engaged in that practice as part of exploring the role of character development and spiritual disciplines in “the good life.” One in-class prompt for my undergraduate NT introduction course asked students to write a response to an imagined interlocutor who questioned why historical study matters for NT interpretation. By inviting students to articulate course material in the register of everyday conversation and asking them to draw connections to their wider lives, I engage their emotions in pedagogically productive ways, helping forge the neural networks needed for longer term recall. Importantly, such practices also promote students’ holistic formation as people who grapple with the lived consequences of biblical interpretation.

Recognizing that the NT’s history of consequences has not been wholly positive, I seek to model how to approach sensitive topics in ways that foster dialogue, attend to the vulnerable, and allow space for unresolved tension. On the first day of class, I often share that my dissertation on joy arose, in part, from my melancholy disposition and a desire to think deeply about a NT motif that has perplexed me. Explaining that our class will also touch on topics that may be difficult for some, I encourage students to lean into that difficulty with faith seeking understanding—instead of ignoring a problem or rushing to a simplistic “solution.” I sometimes also ask them to share with me, in writing, topics that they are interested in or anxious about in our course material. This allows me to frame subsequent sessions in ways that connect with students’ prior learning and established interests, and it also helps me to know which topics may need to be approached with special care. For instance, when gender and the church come up in our study of the NT, I try to remind students that we are dealing not with intellectual puzzles to be debated at arm’s length but with existentially weighty questions that impinge in profound ways on the lives of people in the room and their loved ones. Rather than resolving controversies, I try to present the best arguments for various positions while warning against any version of a position that leads to pastorally harmful beliefs/practices. Inspired by St. Augustine’s On Christian Teaching, I encourage students to be open to differences of opinion and practice within the parameters set by the rule of faith and the twofold law of love for God and neighbor.

Professional Development

As a doctoral student, I earned Duke University Graduate School’s Certificate in College Teaching, and I continue to seek out pedagogical formation. I participated in a faculty seminar on “Post-pandemic Teaching and Learning” (Wheaton College, May 9–10, 2022), for instance, and I served on Wheaton College’s Curriculum Committee, where I thought with colleagues from many disciplines about learning outcomes, syllabus design, course evaluation, and program development. At Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology, I serve on the Committee for Assessment of Program Effectiveness, which works to gather and analyze assessment data related to various academic programs with a view to improving student learning outcomes.