As some of you know, since graduating from seminary I have been teaching part-time as an adjunct instructor at a local university, where one of the required Gen Ed classes is either Intro to World Religions (REL 120) or Intro to Philosophy (PHI 120), either of which I'm qualified to teach. So far only the religion class has been offered at this campus, and that once per year. I've taught it twice now, and you'd expect the second time through to be easier. Not only because you don't have to start from scratch on notes, assignments, or lectures, but you also get to correct your mistakes from the first time through, improve your methods, feel more at ease, etc. All in all, it makes for a better classroom experience. In theory, anyway.
So, I had hoped that I would see the evidence of this in the 10 kids (kids! ... some were 50+, although most were in their 20s) who took the class this term. And yeah, I did. There was much more engagement this time around, more class interaction, more laughs, more Q&A, more positive comments after the term was over, even unsolicited positive feedback in the essay assignment about how helpful the class was. It's really rewarding for me as the instructor to take these young minds full of mush (at least on this topic!) and get them by the end of class to critically engage the material, distinguishing among religions as to beliefs, goals, means, practices, etc, and engage with themselves as well around their worldviews and religious choices.
Grades are turned in on time, with a nice distribution of results (A's to F's), and at least a couple of lives changed for the better. Makes a guy think that I really should be doing this, at least part-time.
Result: one happy teacher. :)
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