Balancing Pose

Retooling Greek for Parish Ministry

I'm teaching a Kairos continuing education class at Luther Seminary this month on how to get your Greek serviceable again if it's been a while since you worked with it. Here's the schedule, pending approval from the Kairos office. You can register here.

Retooling Greek for Parish Ministry

June 21-25, 2010

Luther Seminary - Stub Hall Lounge

Mary Hinkle Shore, professor of New Testament

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Monday

                                                      1-2:30 p.m.     Welcome, Introductions, Shape of the Week; Vocabulary

                                                      2:30-2:45 p.m.      Break

                                                2:45-3:40 p.m.            The Article

                                                      3:40-3:50 p.m.      Break

                                                      3:50-4:40 p.m.      Verbs

                                                      4:40 p.m.     Class ends

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Tuesday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Participles

                                                      10 a.m.    Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.    Little Words: Prepositions, Conjunctions, & Particles

                                                      12:15 p.m.    Class ends

   1:30-3:00 p.m.     Optional afternoon session on BibleWorks software

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Wednesday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Infinitives, Nouns & Adjectives, Pronouns

                                                      10 a.m.   Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.     Studying Words: Using Concordance Tools & Lexicons

                                                      12:30 p.m.     Class ends

   1:30-3:00 p.m.      Optional afternoon session on Accordance Bible software

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Thursday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Process for Greek in Sermon Preparation (using texts for Fifth Sunday after Pentecost).

                                                      10 a.m.     Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.   Process for Greek in Sermon Preparation, part two.

                                                      12:15 p.m.    Class ends

   1:30-3:00 p.m.       Optional afternoon session on web tools for Greek study

                                                      ________________________________________________________________________

Friday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Process for Using Greek in Bible Study Preparation

                                                      10 a.m.     Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.    Resource Fair & Further Study Options

                                                      12:30 p.m.    Class ends

Required Reading

Webb, Joseph M. and Robert Kysar, Greek for Preachers. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2002.

Shore, Mary Hinkle. “How Do I Keep My Greek (or Get It Back)?” Working Preacher, posted 11/16/09. URL http://www.workingpreacher.org/texts.aspx?article_id=278, accessed May 31, 2010.

Other Resources

The bookstore will have two laminated Greek study guides on hand from Zondervan, an introductory one by William Mounce and an intermediate one by Daniel Wallace.

What Professors Wish Students Knew about Grading

It is the hardest part of the job. As we near the end of the semester, I am reminded again of the agony of paper grading for all concerned.

I experienced the roller coaster of curiosity, fear, joy, irritation, etc. first from the perspective of a student: I still remember several comments that were written on papers I turned in during my academic career. In 1982, a professor commented that a paper meant to fulfill the requirement of writing my Christology was "really more of a soteriology,"  and he gave me a B+ for the course. In 1984, another professor wrote at the end of a paper I wrote on antinomianism in the Lutheran Reformation, "More of a dalliance than a paper, but a fine one and fun besides." I had to look up the word, "dalliance." At the time, it seemed unlikely to me that it was a compliment. 

Now as a professor, I wish students could have a bit better understanding of what we go through when offering feedback on papers. So here is my list.

1. I understand that timely feedback honors your work and offers the most potential for significant learning and continued conversation. I also have about one and a half times as much to do as I can fit into a day. My guess is that you have some idea what this sort of schedule is like. I'm not delaying in order to torture you. I'm honestly working as fast as I can.
2. Understand that marginal notes and comments on papers are like email in this way: tone is hard to convey and easy to misconstrue. One of my friends once called me up to read, with rage, a comment he had received on a paper. The teacher had written, "This is good as far as you go...." When he was reading the comment to me over the phone, he realized for the first time that she had probably meant for the emphasis to be on the idea that there was more to say--the paper had not gone as far as it might have. When he first read the comment, however, he heard her saying, "This is good as far as you go..., as if she knew better than to expect stellar work from him.
3. In any given class or on any given assignment, you may not be judged an A student. This does not mean that no one will ever love you, or that God has abandoned you, or that you should just reconcile yourself to a life of failure. Figure out the scale of the problem and then see if you can match the scale of your response to that. 
4. Related to the previous point, I am not God, so stop giving my comments as much weight as you would a theophany. As much as I might like it, I do not have power over whether the rest of your day, or week, or life is good unless you give it to me. No single grade keeps anyone out of a Ph. D. program. No single paper casts your future into stone.
5. I do not pull punches when I am reading papers. I try not to be hurtful, but I have no interest in lying to you. Everyone's work could be improved. Part of my job is pointing out where your paper could be better.
6. It is not personal. I don't know you that well, and I don't think about you that much.
7. I tell myself every time I sit down with a stack of papers, "First, do no harm." Even so, of course, I do. I might say something ridiculous or hurtful on your paper. I ask that you judge my intention to be ridiculous or hurtful on the basis of the whole interaction we have had over weeks or years, rather than on the basis of one paper's comments.
8. I could be wrong. I am wrong at least a few times a day, and that habit might one day be displayed in the margin of your paper. If something bothers you, talk to me.

The professor is neither God nor the Enemy. The professor is just a teacher. When grading, the professor is reading as quickly as possible through a stack of papers and trying to say something helpful on each one. The task is fraught with danger.

Now that I have said my piece, I wonder what students wish professors knew about grading. I await your comments.