Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “The Lutheran Educator”
The year 1529 represents a landmark moment in the history of religious instruction. In that year, Luther’s Small Catechism was first released, inspired by Martin Luther’s assessment and concern of doctrinal knowledge at the time. As he, Melanchthon, and others surveyed the state of churches and schools, they found pastors largely uninformed and entire congregations steeped in superstition and ignorance …
Those of us in education often struggle with competing values. There are realities to consider, such as the fact that some teachers are working with large class sizes and schedules that make it hard to devote significant time to each piece of student work. From this perspective, we look for assessment strategies that decrease grading time and increase efficiency for the teacher. …
Out of decades of research about what does and doesn’t work in education, only a small number of ideas are almost universally accepted. Feedback is one of them. We need feedback to learn, and this is true in and out of the classroom. Sometimes the feedback is subtle or so integrated into the experience that we don’t recognize it, but it …
Last year I had the joy of working with a group of colleagues on a task force about portfolios in education, especially as we are finding that different groups at the university use different software packages. While our task was largely focused on providing advice on policy and practice in reviewing and selecting portfolio software options, we also took the time …
I think you will agree that checkups and autopsies are two completely different things. They serve different purposes. They meet different needs. You might be wondering what in the world I’m writing here, but stay with me and I’ll explain the important lesson we can glean from this. The first is all about determining a person’s health and then responding …
In the 2016 book Pedagogy of Faith, I contributed a chapter on the role of grades in teaching the faith. The topic comes up often when I talk to other teachers, and the chapter seemed to resonate with a quite a few readers. So I decided to expand on some of the ideas in that chapter over the upcoming weeks, creating a …
During my first year as a teacher, I had the joy of working with seventh and eighth graders. One of the things I most enjoyed about teaching this age was their wonderful curiosity. I’ve taught students from middle school all the way through graduate school, and I still find that middle school students ask some of the most interesting questions. …
A number of years ago, there was a video created to illustrate the fact that things are not what they seem in the visuals that surround us. It showed a young model getting ready for a photo shoot. She sat down wearing no makeup. Then they added some makeup. You could quickly watch the transformation. Yet, when the makeup was …
Over the last month, I’ve been spending fifteen to twenty minutes on apologetics with my twelve-year-old daughter each night. We do it right after our family bedtime devotions. We are working through a selection of about forty short lessons. As I explained to my daughter, we are directed in 1 Peter 3:15 to “honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being …
If you’ve been teaching or learning something for more than a few years, you’ve likely developed a level of knowledge and expertise that exceeds that of most students. Most teachers know this, but it is easy for us to forget. We can get so caught up in preparing the next lesson or covering the material that we forget to stop and …
