Anyway, even though I'm excited about how tech might help me improve my teaching, I'm also spending a significant amount of time diving into the Alberta Program of Studies for Spanish Language & Culture, as well as the Guides to Implementation, and seeing how I can better align what I'm doing, as well as better inform students and families of what the program is all about. I'd like to make the outcomes more explicit and understandable for all of us. I had also taken a lot of notes this last semester on issues I ran into with lack of understanding, misunderstanding, and lack of retention, and wanted to improve on my instructional strategies. One book that got strong reviews on Amazon is Emily Spinelli's English Grammar for Students of Spanish, with a number of people recommending this as a teaching resource. I biked up to the U of C this afternoon to pick up a few other resources I wanted to check out and saw her book in the mix, so I picked it up as well. This thing I going to be the backbone for any vocab and grammar I introduce. Lo amo y se lo recomiendo mucho.
I'm in the middle of preparing for what I hope will be a much better year of teaching junior and senior high Spanish. My plan is to use Google Sites and Google Classroom together as the main UI for my students, considering that we're rolling out a BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device) program this fall and therefore I can rely on students to have access to online content. This will enable me to present audio, visual, and print resources in an organized and always-accessible manner and will hopefully enhance learning and increase motivation. When I return in the fall, I'll also have access to a new projector, which will allow me to present such resources in the classroom more effectively, and to make the experience more immersive and interactive. I don't know what my classroom situation will be, other than that I most likely will be working out of multiple classrooms, but I hope that having the same projector setup in each room and the promise of working wirelessly will make any transitions relatively quick and painless. Goodness knows I end up spending the first part of each class attempting to put out fires.
Anyway, even though I'm excited about how tech might help me improve my teaching, I'm also spending a significant amount of time diving into the Alberta Program of Studies for Spanish Language & Culture, as well as the Guides to Implementation, and seeing how I can better align what I'm doing, as well as better inform students and families of what the program is all about. I'd like to make the outcomes more explicit and understandable for all of us. I had also taken a lot of notes this last semester on issues I ran into with lack of understanding, misunderstanding, and lack of retention, and wanted to improve on my instructional strategies. One book that got strong reviews on Amazon is Emily Spinelli's English Grammar for Students of Spanish, with a number of people recommending this as a teaching resource. I biked up to the U of C this afternoon to pick up a few other resources I wanted to check out and saw her book in the mix, so I picked it up as well. This thing I going to be the backbone for any vocab and grammar I introduce. Lo amo y se lo recomiendo mucho.
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"I wonder if, in a hundred years, some form of psychedelic Christianity will have emerged"7/15/2015 Jules Evans' spiritual and religious journey and musings never fail to inform and provoke further thinking about my own. His latest post, Psychedelia and the Future of Religion, touches on a number of issues relevant to the future of Christianity and its role in facilitating both meaningful spiritual experiences and ethical character development.
In talking to those in my school directly involved with 'discipleship,' the concern has been for the need for students to have significant encounters with God in order to solidify and invigorate their spiritual lives and commitment to God and the Christian community. This is true of my church as well. Yet, no one really knows of any reliable formulas for having these encounters. Many of our practices are simply trial-and-error, either doing what has sometimes worked in the past, doing what we believe Jesus or other figures in the Bible modeled for us, or doing what has seemed to work for other Christian communities. Unsure as to whether the perseverance involved in doing the same things over and over is insanity (per Einstein) or moral development (per St. Paul and St. James), we tend to vacillate between pressing in or checking out. I don't know of any (Western/mainstream) Christian communities that have seriously considered the use of psychedelics, mainly because of the fear/stigma associated with addiction or the possibility of demonic activity. Even in my own drug-free spiritual experiences, I've often been left asking questions similar to those Evans lists in his post under the subheading "Revealing spiritual reality?":
Evans and Strassman seem to suggest that if psychedelics are to have a role in our spiritual well-being, we need to avoid making it just about transgression against organized religion (i.e., mainstream cults) and instead, with discernment and wisdom, seek to integrate them in a safe, pro-social way. The challenge in doing so within Christianity, I think, is having a critical mass of both faithful and competent practitioners, and developing the theological backing to legitimize it. What do you think? Should the church offer "[c]ontrolled places to lose control"? What about a Christian school? |
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