Teaching and Christian Imagination

Teaching and Christian Imagination

by Susan M. Felch (Author), David L. Smith (Author)

Synopsis

This book invites Christian teachers to slow down, take a deep breath, and allow their weary souls to recover. The authors - experienced teachers themselves - encourage teacher-readers to imagine their work differently, opening up possibilities for reanimating how they view learning in a Christian context. In Teaching and Christian Imagination David Smith and Susan Felch creatively use three metaphors - journeys, gardens, and buildings - to illuminate a fresh vision of teaching and learning. Stretching beyond familiar cliches, they infuse these metaphors with rich biblical echoes and theological resonances. We need vision, not just beliefs and techniques, the authors argue in their introduction. And that vision, if it is to sustain us, must be deeply Christian.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 256
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Published: 31 Jan 2016

ISBN 10: 0802873235
ISBN 13: 9780802873231

Media Reviews
-- Christian Scholar's Review
Those who take the time to read Teaching and Christian Imagination may feel like they have experienced refreshment from some kind of retreat or even perhaps from a kind of spiritual pilgrimage. They will have had occasion to step back and see the vocation of teaching in new and imaginative ways.

Dorothy Bass
-- Valparaiso University
Imagine this, teachers, and experience it through reading this book: Set aside, for a moment, the fast pace and quantitative judgments that shape so much of contemporary education. Encounter biblical texts, poems, and works of art that help you to see what you do every day with new eyes. Hear down-to-earth stories from other teachers. Let your imagination of what it means to teach and to learn deepen and expand. Find renewal in the indispensable, beautiful, and difficult vocation to which God has called you.

Karen E. Eifler
-- University of Portland
Deftly unpacking their three central metaphors for teaching -- pilgrimage, gardening, and building -- the authors provide catalysts for teachers of any discipline in religious institutions to rethink, reignite, and recommit to their vocation. Wending my way through this text, I found myself invited and equipped to cultivate a hermeneutic of wonder as a bracing, life-giving complement to the hermeneutic of suspicion that tends to dominate so much of the landscape in higher education today.

Perry L. Glanzer
-- Baylor University
I have never read anything quite like this delightful book. The authors both nourish your soul and draw you along the path toward teaching excellence. They offer colorful meditations on the imagery of pedagogy while also rooting these ruminations in the soil of practical teaching experience. While reading these pages, I repeatedly found myself inspired to rebuild not only my classroom practices but also my own life. Every kind of Christian teacher will find this book life-giving.
Author Bio
David I. Smith is Director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, Calvin College, and Associate Professor of German at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Susan M. Felch is Director of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and Professor of English at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.