As I mentioned in a recent post, Mandy and I had the chance to teach a summer module at our Alma Mater in May. Once again I wish to express my gratitude to the faculty and administration of Davis College for providing us with this opportunity. What follows are a few of my thoughts after having a couple months to reflect on the experience.
First, summer modules are a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they’re very helpful because it provides students a way to retake a class they may have failed to put the work into, or to take a class that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to fit into their schedule. On the other hand, there is just too much information in a standard semester-long course to try to cram it into a summer module that normally only lasts two weeks. I’ve been a student in plenty of summer classes, and it’s hard enough trying to process all the information. Having now co-taught a summer module, I know that professors don’t have it any easier. Trying to say everything that needs to be said in a short amount of time is very difficult.
Second, and related to the first, I think that I would prioritize slightly different aspects of each of the prophets I discussed with the class if I were to do it again. I’m fairly certain that this is something that even professor who have taught for twenty years say after finishing a class (even a semester-length class!). I look forward to my next opportunity to teach the Latter Prophets, as I think I’ll do much better.
Third, we used Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Prophets by J. Gordon McConville. I think this textbook is quite good for a college level survey course. It also has the bonus of having a chapter on Lamentations, which Mandy somehow managed to squeeze into our survey. If I had the opportunity to teach this course again, I’d want to try some different ways of integrating the textbook with the classroom experience. As it was, we asked the students to write a one page interaction paper based on one of the boxes in the chapters covering the prophets we were going to talk about that day. We spent the first few minutes of class discussing their short papers. It worked OK, but in hindsight, I would have liked to see a little more effort by the students (generally, of course, some students did an excellent job) to process his arguments. Perhaps this would have been easier to see in a normal semester-length class? Either way, I’d like to come up with some way to improve the textbook-student-classroom relationship.