How to Discuss

Event Workbook Peter David Gross Contents © 2013 by Wheatstone Ministries All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Wheatstone Ministries. For information about this book and other Wheatstone Ministries publications, please contact us: section one 11 How to Discuss Lecture section two 21 Your Discussion Republic, Book VII section three 35 Leading Discussions Lecture section four 47 Bringing It Home Resources from Wheatstone 49 Building a Discussion Group Forming Your Small Group Discovering Group Dynamics Group Building Challenges 61 Preparing for Discussion Making Good Opening Questions Sample Questions for Books and Films An Introduction to Reading for Discussion 71 Difficult Discussions Leading a Quick Discussion Leading Large Group Discussions Discussing the Bible 87 After Discussion Asessing and Grading Your Discussion Group Go Deeper: Spiritually Assessing a Discussion Group 99 Articles from The Examined Life Teach Like Heaven is Real, by Peter David Gross Information + Passivity = Slavery, by Naomi Geier The Mentor Model of Education, by Lindsay Marshall How to Discuss:Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love, by Peter David Gross Wheatstone Ministries 221 N. Harbor Blvd., Suite N Fullerton, CA 92832 ISBN-13: 978-1493560813 ISBN-10: 1493560816 Cover design and book layout by Lisa Oka 7 Welcome Thanks for coming to this Discussion for Transformation event! Wheatstone has seen the transformative effect of discussions for over a decade, and we’re excited to share what we’ve learned with you. We firmly believe that discussion is for everyone. Anyone can be transformed by the community that discussion creates and by the understanding it yields. Yet leading discussions and incorporating them into a ministry can be difficult. To do it well we need to know what discussions are for, and how discuss well. That’s our goal for today: to become prepared to pursue truth with students at any time and in any place by gaining some in-depth understanding of discussion and its purposes. We’ll talk about discussion, and you’ll experience it, too. This workbook is a companion to today’s event, with lecture notes, today’s reading, and note-taking spaces throughout. We’ve also included some of our best resources on discussion to help you keep on getting better even after the event is finished. We’re partners, so feel free to get in touch with your feedback, questions, or notes. Chad Glazener, our Partnerships Director, will be delighted to talk to you. Email him at chad@wheatstoneministries.com. About the Author Peter David Gross Executive Director, Wheatstone Ministries Peter joined Wheatstone in 2007, serving in almost every ministry capacity—from Mentor or Alumni Coordinator to Conference Manager, Art Director, or Director of Programs. In 2012, he became Wheatstone’s Executive Director, bringing clear organizational vision and ambitious goals for ministry and growth. In addition to working for the renewal of church and culture through Christian maturity, he thinks about art, anthropology, theology, and philosophy, and he paints, draws, designs, and writes. He is the Editor of The Examined Life and a contributor to The Scriptorium. 9 section one How to Discuss a lecture by Peter David Gross 11 What is discussion? Two or more people seeking a single, unknown truth together. Consider: What is a question you care about, but don’t know the answer to? What isn’t discussion? Two or more people...Discussions don’t happen alone. Alone, your thoughts can’t be sharpened from the outside. Alone, you won’t have much reason to change your mind. It isn’t... a lecture a chat ...seeking... You aren’t building a truth; you’re searching for it. It’s out there somewhere, waiting for you to find. You’re a team of explorers on a big quest. a debate a therapy session ...a single [truth]... Discussions must be focused on something or they won’t get anywhere. Discussions depend on the group’s commitment to finding something that’s outside of them. a meeting an appeal ...[an] unknown truth... If you know something certainly and inflexibly, then there is no need for discussion. You’ve arrived! But for everything else, you must put your beliefs on the table, vulnerable to discussion partners’ inspection, so that they can be refined. ...together. Even when many people are in the same place, using the same words, they might not be together. Self-defensiveness, apathy, intent to control, competitiveness, spite, envy, or simple errors can drive people apart, even when they’re in the same place. 12 Section One How to Discuss 13 Discussion is powerful. Why is discussion powerful? Growth and Adulthood 1. Discussion is a remarkable catalyst for sincere personal transformation. 2. Discussions are fonts of ideas and actions for informed citizens. Education and Skill 3. Discussions are long-lasting methods for mastering a discipline. 4. Discussions are capacity-building exercises. Excellence in discussion promotes excellence in reading, critical thought, aural apprehension, public speaking, and social skills. Mediation and Understanding 5. Discussions foster mutual understanding between antagonistic parties. 6. Discussions are unique safe havens for acknowledging different opinions without abandoning a deep commitment to objective truths. 7. Discussions are trust-building communal experiences that make participants more receptive to appeals from each other. Because of characteristics 1, 7, 9, and 12, discussion is ... Human Value and God’s Headship 8. Discussion is the principle method of searching for truth that intrinsically affirms both a) the value of every human individual and b) God’s primary role in guiding their growth. For more, see the article, “How to Discuss: Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love” on page 102. Its subjects are powerful. In discussion, participants can encounter the vastness of the world, the complexity of thought, and any number of things that exceed us. When discovered alone, they can be overwhelming. When discovered in community, we can stand and accept them. It meets social needs. In an era dominated by virtual experiences, we long for authentic community, honesty, and safe vulnerability. «« Because discussion unites people in a common pursuit and requires them to communicate, it meets these needs. It is made by its participants. Are you more likely to value something you discover or something you are shown? «« Are you more likely to identify with something you make, or something you receive? «« Discussions are totally free. Participants learn through achievement, not by receiving their conclusions. «« Yet because of the characteristics above marked with ««, discussion is ... Culture and Community 9. Discussions are compelling experiences of vulnerable, 10. productive community. 11. Discussions are what our culture calls for. 12. Discussions are a free activity that the Church is accused of stifling. 14 Section One How to Discuss 15 section three Leading Discussions lecture by Peter David Gross 35 Who can lead discussions? Discussion is for everyone, but leading discussion requires extra skill. Essential Skills 1. Discussion leaders need easy familiarity with the group’s common text. 2. Discussion leaders need empathy and spiritual discernment. Hospitality Creating a physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and social space in which a) group members can feel at home, and in which b) it is easier to do the things you are there for than not to do them. 4. Discussion leaders need humility. Liberation For the duration of the discussion, doing whatever you can to remove the things that are keeping your group members back from pursuing truth in community. 5. Discussion leaders need wonder. Things like: Leading discussion means doing whatever you can to help your group... 1. 3. Discussion leaders need to recognize wellstructured arguments. Consider: Which essential skills should you develop further? How do they do it? Through hospitality and liberation. 2. 1. 3. 4. 2. Discussion leaders are not responsible to: 3. Consider: Are you naturally better at hospitality or liberation? Why? 1. 2. 4. 3. 4. 36 Section Three Leading Discussions 37 Preparing for Discussion Beginning Discussions 1. Make a mental map of the common text. Know what themes it covers, how they relate to each other, and where to find them. 1. Ask yourself, “What will it take to successfully transition this group from what they have been doing into this discussion?” 2. Find your questions. See ###“Making Good Discussion Questions” on page 59. 2. Pray for the Spirit’s unity and Christ’s leadership. 3. Put your questions in relationship to the book’s themes, and know how they connect to each other. 3. Ask a good opening question. 4. Relinquish control. Prepare to continue your hospitality and begin your liberation. 4. If you don’t have any questions that interest you, prepare to defer to your group. For example, you might collect their questions and then help them pick one question to follow. 5. Pray for God’s blessing on each group member. Five Constant Considerations 1. The common text 2. The opening question 3. Yourself 4. Your group 5. God It’s all about the transitions. People feel comfortable or nervous during transitions. They form expectations and judgments. As a discussion leader, they are the times that are worth most of your attention. Consider: Which of these five will it be hardest for me to attend to? 38 Section Three Leading Discussions 39 How can you tell when you have led a successful discussion? Leading discussions requires so much empathy, focus, and prayer that it is easy to feel disappointed when they are finished. In fact, there are only two ways to fail at discussion: Yet it’s important to remember that discussions are powerful precisely because they do not rely on their leaders. The practice of discussion yields growth whether or not your group has figured everything out or had a satisfying emotional experience. If you have given your group a place in which to discuss and the space to discuss freely, then you can be at peace. 1. 2. Remember, there are many goods that can come directly from a single discussion. Here are six good things that frequently come. If you recognize any of these from your discussion, then you can have confidence that it was a success. The apprehension of truth. A stronger love of the truth. The recognition of ignorance. A clear idea of where to go next. An experience of real community. Honest prayer. 42 Section Three Leading Discussions 43 section four Bringing It Home resources from Wheatstone Ministries 47 resources: section one Building a Discussion Group 49 Forming Your Small Group Forming small groups can be a challenge. They’re often made of people with wildly different backgrounds, expectations, and communication styles. But the investment is worth it: the longer diverse small groups stick together, the better their discussions are. The following section is designed to help you think about making an effective small group with all kinds of group members. When getting ready to start a new small group, consider two things: how to establish a new community and how to use space and time in your discussions. Developing Deep Communities Discussions are best practiced in the context of small, committed groups. While building lasting relationships in a new group does take time, there are some things you can do to speed the process. The faster you form deep relationships, the faster you can have deeper discussions together. Here are a few suggestions. Quickly establish an autonomous group identity. A group can be more than the sum of its members. To create a group identity, work together and come up with words, symbols, and activities that represent it. Give yourselves a name. Agree on something to do at the beginning of every discussion. Pick a mascot or primary symbol that fits with your goals. Pick a song. Little things like these connect people quickly, then gain value as the group keeps meeting. They just keep getting better and better. If your group members aren’t already experienced in discussion, share meaningful and trust-building experiences before you discuss. It’s difficult to “say what you think” and “be who you are” when you don’t know whether the people around you will accept you or reject you. For that reason, it’s a good idea to have meaningful shared experiences together. When you’ve experienced something meaningful with another person, it’s easier to trust them with your honest thoughts. Examples: Volunteer at a convalescent home together. Go on a hike to watch the sunset together. Watch a sad movie together. Exchange life stories. Share a progressive dinner. 50 Resources: Section One Attempt challenges that force your group to work together in order to learn what sort of things make it hard for you to cooperate. Some activities bring out the best (and worst) in teams. Try one, then change the rules of how your group achieves it: limit how frequently a talkative group member speaks. Allow a naturally silent person the space to lead. Etc. By shifting through extremes like these, you can discover social, emotional, and interpersonal categories to address as a group. Examples: Build a huge sand castle together that tells a consistent story. Try to untangle yourselves after linking arms at random. Or see “Group Formation Challenges” for more ideas. Talk about group members’ roadblocks directly and come up with groupapproved plans for working around them. When you or someone in your group is kept from really discussing by something, speak up, even if the roadblocks are directly caused by someone else in the group. If the community fosters collaboration rather than competition, the group will confront the roadblocks with a positive, problemsolving attitude, rather than with defense and offense. In discussion, it’s better to work on group disfunctions directly than to bottle them up, because discussion only works when you can rely on one another. Tip: Ask yourselves questions like, “Are we going to tackle the problem head-on by finding its roots, or should we find ways to accommodate it instead?” “Could we modify our communication norms to make discussion smoother for everyone?” “Has everyone been equally heard?” Pray together and pray for each other regularly. Prayer is the best means by which to establish group unity, because the Holy Spirit is the source and guarantee of the unity of God’s people. Prayer is also a chance to be vulnerable and honest before heading into a hard task together. When you intercede and minister to one another through prayer, you practice compassion, build trust, and invite our gracious, unifying God into your activities. He will make your discussions richer, and your bonds stronger. Building a Discussion Group 51 Making Space and Time for Discussion As with any focused activity, preparing for discussion requires careful attention to your group’s surroundings. When you are in a place for an hour or two, it impacts you. Some people are sensitive to certain sounds, some to certain sights, and so on. While there is no setting that works best for every small group, at Wheatstone we’ve found some tricks that are consistently helpful. One hour is good, two hours is better, and three hours (or more) is best. The first hour of most discussions is spent figuring out what everyone means by the words they are using, how the group will tackle the question, what terms you will avoid, and etc. In our experience, therefore, most of the “good stuff” in discussions happens during the second and third (or fourth or fifth) hours of discussion. We recognize that most people can’t give that much time to a small group, but when you are able to, take advantage of it. Real growth takes real time–the more time, the better. Tip: If, like most groups, you cannot create a regular three-hour block of time in which to meet, use the time you have, from twenty minutes to two hours, to discuss regularly, and schedule discussion parties once a quarter to indulge in a full three-hour discussion. See “Leading Quick Discussions” for more tips. Sitting in a circle helps everyone be seen and heard. People communicate almost as much through their body language and facial expressions as they do through their speech. Don’t miss out on any of it! By sitting in a circle, you ensure that everyone can pick up on each other’s unspoken thoughts and feelings. That way, it becomes easier to see when naturally quiet people have something to say, or when some group members have lost track of the discussion. Tip: Sitting in a circle can make some people feel overly exposed. When that’s the case, allowing people to sit behind desks or tables can help. Do you have a big, round table at which everyone could sit? 52 Resources: Section One Don’t limit movement during your discussions. Discussions take a long time–longer than most people like to sit still. That’s just fine. Get up and go to the bathroom when you need to. Go grab a snack. Stretch a bit or lie down on the floor. No need to announce it or to ask permission. Just remember to wait a little while before speaking again to catch up on anything you missed while you were gone. Tip: Do you sense that most of the people in the group are getting tired or stircrazy? At a convenient pause, take a break to stretch or to listen to a song. Don’t raise your hands to speak. While discussion groups usually have a leader, their job isn’t to approve speech. It’s to foster speech. So don’t rely on anyone’s approval to talk, or let anyone rely on your approval to talk. As group members, say what you mean, and let the rest of the group do what they think is best with each idea. Raising hands and asking permission only makes sense in contexts of authority and submission, not in the context of free discussion. Limit distractions. Different people are distracted by different things. Find out what distracts the people in your group, and avoid it, whatever it is. Can you focus better inside or outside? In a room that is silent, or that has little white noise? In simple chairs or in comfy ones? With snacks in the center or off to the side? Conclusion Discussion is pretty simple, but it requires a holy community. And everything we’ve suggested has to do with helping that holy community form. In fact, we haven’t said a single thing about discussions! We’re laying a foundation for discussion. Remember, though: your goal is forming a holy community, not following these tips. Every community is different. Attend to your group to see what will bind you together. Building a Discussion Group 53 Discovering Group Dynamics There’s More: See “Group Building Challenges” on page 56 for samples of physical puzzles you can use. Physical puzzles are a great way to discover 1) how your group communicates and 2) some common impediments to honest discussion—all before your discussions even begin. A good puzzle is one that requires your group to collaborate on some common goal, and allows you the freedom to modify the task in order to uncover new insights. During a puzzle, you might ask the following questions: Questions about Communication: Who are the talkative members in my group? Who are the quiet members in my group? Do all of the members of my group feel heard? How does my group manage silence, or when everyone talks at once? Tip: To experiment with group communication, try silencing the talkative members of your group, or requiring the quiet members of your group to be the only people who can speak. How does this help? By knowing how your group speaks and listens, you’ll be able to help quiet students speak in discussion without making them feel “put on the spot,” and you’ll be able to help domineering students become reflective. Questions about Leadership: Who tends to lead in the group? When do they take on leadership, and how do others respond? Is the group dividing into parts? How does the group manage differing opinions or ideas? Are members in my group willing to be challenged by other members? How do they respond? by Chad Glazener How does this help? By identifying group leaders, you will know who to turn to in order to help get the group back on track, and who to protect from domineering behavior. Questions about Collaboration: How does my group receive and process information? Do they talk a lot before acting or do they act right away? Does my group flourish with more or less instruction? How does my group respond to sudden changes in the current task? What sorts of rules does my group create for itself? Tip: To experiment with group collaboration, change the amount of time the group is allowed to complete parts of the challenge, or leave intentional holes in your instructions to see how they are filled in. How does this help? Knowing how your group tackles a task can help you know what kind of discussion questions to ask, and how to frame them. It can also help you predict how your group will respond to your questions, so that you can help free them to think in new ways. Be sure to look for both verbal (word choice, tone of voice) and non-verbal (body language, facial expressions, physical habits) cues. Draw attention to these in your debrief times as a way to explore how your group interacts. After each puzzle, debrief the experience with your group. Begin not by saying what you observed, but by asking them probing, open questions about communication, leadership, and collaboration. Help them find for themselves any ways in which their group could work together more beautifully. Then, brainstorm practical ways to apply what they have learned. Only after the students have shared their insights and thought about how to apply them should you share any additional insights that you uncovered. Tip: To experiment with group leadership, allow particular members of the group to modify the rules before the challenge begins, or require people to work together who might not naturally choose each other. 54 Resources: Section One Building a Discussion Group 55 Group Building Challenges 1. Over, Under, Through The set-up: You’ll need: twine, a good location. Between two trees (or poles or other stationary objects) that are 6-12 feet apart in The rules: The group begins on one side of the twine. Their goal is to get everyone to the opposite side of the twine. If at any point during the challenge anyone touches the twine in any way, the whole team must return and begin again. The group moves from one side of the twine to the other by passing, one person at a time, through each of the “spaces” created by the pieces of twine: the space between the ground and the first piece, between the first and second piece, between the second and third piece, and the space above the third piece. Yet, once a group member has passed through one of these four spaces, no other group member may pass through that space until every other space is used. The space is “closed.” 2. Language Maze a grassy area, hang three taut pieces of twine. The vertical space between each length of twine (and between the bottom length and the ground)should be roughly two feet. Additionally, for the first round only, the top space cannot be used until the bottom three spaces have been used. Finally, whenever someone attempts to get from one side to the other by going through the air, either by jumping or by being lifted, spotters must be on the receiving end to help ensure their safety. Remember that the ability to speak or see is a kind of social power in the context of this puzzle, so silencing or blindfolding some people and directing others to speak or see can give you a sense for the group’s power dynamics, and how people manage them. Ways to vary the rules: Silence one person, or everyone but one person. Blindfold one person. Or two. Or three. The set-up: You’ll need: twine, blindfolds, various objects, a level space. The rules: Select one person to blindfold. Then, instruct the group to invent a “language” to help the blindfolded person walk through a twine maze that you will create for them. This created language will be the group’s only means of leading their blindfolded group member through the maze. The language may not include any existing languages or symbols. For example, a buzzing sound might mean “stop,” or clapping twice might mean “jump,” but “halt” or “no” may not mean “stop,” and “up” or “saltas” may not mean “jump.” The group has 3 minutes to complete their language. After the language has been finished, place the blindfold on the selected group member and instruct the group that they may now use no language but the one they just invented. Then, construct a path for the blindfolded person by laying twine on the floor in two semi-parallel lines to make a path and by placing other obstacles (sweaters, cones, etc.) within it. Make sure that the maze has a clear beginning and end. Lead the blindfolded person to the beginning Sample debrief questions: Resources: Section One At your discretion, you may stop the group to allow them to refine their language and pick a new group member to blindfold, but each time someone is blindfolded, you must create a new maze. When the blindfolded person reaches the end of the maze, the puzzle is solved. Ways to vary the rules: Introduce new elements to the maze that haven’t been accounted for in the group’s language. (For example, if the group forgot to introduce a way to say “jump,” then add an obstacle for the blindfolded person to jump over.) Introduce time limits Choose a different person to blindfold. Sample debrief questions: How quickly did you begin trying things? Why did or didn’t you take time to talk it through? Was anyone forced to do something they didn’t want to do? Why, or how did you avoid that? What were your group members’ roles? 56 of the maze and let the group begin to instruct them. If the blindfolded person touches the twine or any object, or speaks using anything other than the group’s created language, then the whole group must restart. If any other group member speaks using anything other than their created language, or changes the maze, or touches the blindfolded person, the group must restart. Other than additional vocabulary words, what was your language missing? What about your language made miscommunications easy or hard? How did you alter your “words” to make them mean as much as you wanted? And what are all the ways that people change English words to alter their meanings? How did you work together (or not) to solve problems? Did you leave anyone out? Building a Discussion Group 57 3. Molten Lava Crossing The set-up: You’ll need: 1/2 as many small carpet squares or cork board circles as group members, blindfolds, a level and grassy space The rules: The whole group must travel from a starting line to a finish line. Yet the group can only stand on carpet squares. If a group member loses contact with a carpet square at any point (for example, by dropping it or by lifting their foot from it when no one else is touching it), the carpet square is “burned up” and removed from the game. If a group member touches the ground at any point, the entire team must start over. Ways to vary the rules: Limit who can speak Blindfold multiple people Place a group member on one of the carpet squares “in the field,” to be retrieved by the group Introduce variations to the number and sizes of the carpet squares The group may receive a “burned” carpet square back in exchange for blindfolding a group member. Sample debrief questions: How did your group respond when someone made a mistake? How did your group respond when the challenge became more difficult? Why did it take you as long as it did to get across? 58 Resources: Section One 59 resources: section two Building a Discussion Group 61 Making Good Opening Questions Making good opening questions is an art, and it takes practice. You’ll get better as you go. But here are a few tips to help you see what makes a good question, or to help you start making them yourself. They’ll give you a head start. Remember: opening questions are “finely-crafted discussion-instigators by which leaders empower their groups.” How can you instigate discussion and empower your group? Here’s what we think. Ask questions you have. This is our first principle to making good opening questions. Let your own sense of wonder be your guide. Asking questions that you have raises the stakes. It keeps you invested in the discussion, and protects you from the temptation to control the group’s conclusions. What’s more, it ensures that you’ll start the discussion with investment and some passion, a passion that’s often catching. Use the text as an anchor to launch the discussion Your opening question should center on your group’s common text. It helps the group come together around something tangible and shared. It gives everyone access, even if they don’t immediately understand the terms you use. Further, your should try framing your opening question according to the “world” or “limitations” of the text you are discussing. For example, you could preface your question with the phrase, “According to the author...” or “If we lived in the world this text describes...” Tip: Mark multiple passages that relate to your opening question. You should be able to quickly turn to any of these passages if the discussion wanders off-topic. Tip: If your common text is a book, put question marks in its margins to mark ideas that make you wonder. Use these moments as the starting place for your questions. Be on the hunt for a better question Forming good questions can be a long process, even after the discussion begins. Continue to think about your question as the discussion progresses, and see if you can further clarify what you meant and how to say it. Too broad? Too narrow? Some discussion questions can be too broad to empower your group. The group can’t discern where to begin. On the other hand, some discussion questions can be too narrow to instigate discussion, inviting snap judgments and quick answers instead. Remember: questions are meant to fuel the discussion, so ask questions that give your group a clear start on a long journey. Example: First Question: What is glory in the gospel of John? Example: A broad question would be something like “What is love?” It’s just so hard to know where to begin! Continue asking questions that follow the trajectory of the discussion Questions are the fuel of discussion. Continue to form new questions that keep your group moving forward, building on what you’ve already discovered together. A narrow question would be something like “When have you demonstrated love?” Group members can give one answer, then it’s done. A balanced question would be something like “Why is love patient and kind?” It’ll take a while, but you see where to start: at the relationship between patience, kindess, and love. 62 by Chad Glazener Resources: Section Two Refined First Question: Is glory connected to anything in this book? What? Final Question: How is glory connected to sight in John? Tip: You can find lots of related questions by tracking big themes in your common text. By having a sense for the “big ideas” in the text, you can quickly find textual wells from which to draw new questions. Building a Discussion Group 63 resources: section three Difficult Discussions 71 Leading a Quick Discussion Since real insights take real time, discussion leaders need to be at the top of their game when they only have a short time for discussion. It may be counterintuitive, but it’s harder to lead a 45 minute discussion then a three hour one! But it isn’t impossible. Here’s what to do. Here are some extra tips. Try to find questions that does not require your group to define many terms. Actively, frequently model interest and wonder. Say things like, “I was really interested when she said ___, and it made me wonder ____...” When your group sees you engaged, they will be more likely to become engaged too. If you’re stumped, you could try collecting your group member’s honest questions, and following one of them. Honest, group-based enthusiasm is often a helpful guide. To do this, however, you need extra mastery of the text. No matter which question comes up, you’ll need to feel comfortable tying it to the common text for your group. Quick discussions need... A short but complete common text Don’t try discussing Romans in 45 minutes. Go for Titus instead. We recommend texts like substantial speeches, poems, short stories, quick and argumentative journalism, and works of visual art. Note that some of these options make it difficult to give all participants equal access to the text. One of our favorite tricky options is discussing a lecture, either recorded or live. As an example, here are a few ways to provide a shared point for the group’s focus. Provide a transcript of the speech they heard to all participants. Provide a selection of compelling, argumentative quotations from the speech. Provide a clear, clean outline of the speech. Require participants to take notes on a standardized form during the speech, then bring them to discussion. Chart their insights on a whiteboard throughout the discussion time. Bring an easily-navigable recording to the discussion. Bring a short text that complements the speech. 72 Established, group-wide trust You won’t be able to dive into discussion immediately if your group can’t be vulnerable with their thoughts. If your group does not trust each other, spend your time building trust instead. See “Building Your Discussion Group” for more tips on building trust. Additional Tips 1. Don’t “wade in” to quick discussions. Unless your group is sensitive, “cannonball!” 2. Quickly find and socially empower interested group members. 3. In quick discussions, you have less time to “nanny” your group. Don’t let them become dependent; push them out of the nest. Extra-compelling, quickly accessible opening questions 4. Encourage your group members to always “show their work.” Since you don’t have much time, you need an opening question that gets your group members going right away. One method to make that happen could be to start the discussion with a really provocative question. Controversial, passionate questions can get a group started quickly, but there’s a problem too: they will rarely be answerable in a short period of time. If you stack the front of the conversation too much to your advantage, you’ll give up your advantage at the end of conversation. Try finding a question that’s interesting, but relatively small. 5. Set “house rules” for group members to quickly signal when they are lost, when they think an argument is bad, & etc. Make those rules together and make sure that they won’t embarrass your shyest group members. Resources: Section Three 6. Pray. Real insight takes real time, but Christ is our light. He can give insights at any time. Ask him to! Difficult Discussions 73 Leading Large Group Discussions Introduction Challenge 2. The unlikelihood of universal interest Discussions happen when groups rely on each other in pursuit of truth. That’s why discussions are better when group members get better at communicating, empathizing, and problem-solving with one another. Better mutual understanding means better discussions. The larger the group, the easier it is for people to check out. In a small group, enthusiasm is contagious. In a large group, people who aren’t initially interested will likely find affirmation for their boredom. These groups-within-a-group have the power to mire everyone’s enthusiasm. And, as you’d expect, the more tightly-knit a group, the easier those efforts toward mutual understanding. That’s why small, committed discussion groups tend to be more successful than large or infrequent groups are. Smaller discussion groups have an instant head start on having good discussions because each member can learn to understand everyone else more quickly. Challenge 3. Aggravated power dynamics Yet many schools and youth groups don’t have the luxury of low student-toleader ratios. While Wheatstone stongly advocates for low-ratio education and ministry environments (especially since information is so easily and broadly accessible) we know that various limitations sometimes make low ratios impossible or extremely difficult for churches or schools to achieve. And that, admittedly, makes discussions harder. Sometimes sloppier. It’s harder to see good results. But that does not mean discussions shouldn’t happen in large groups. They will be harder, yes, and their gains will be less clear, but discussion is so good for students, and has so much potential to elevate, liberate, and empower them, that it’s worth it. Incorporating discussions into large-group education makes sense. It simply requires some clever problem-solving from committed discussion leaders. In this section, we’ll lay out the challenges of large groups, the goals a large group discussion leader should have, and some possible solutions to meet those goals and overcome those challenges. The Challenges Challenge 1. The impossibility of universal participation The larger the group, the less likely it is that every group member will get to contribute to her own satisfaction. Because groups work best when all group members work together, this makes discussions less effective. 74 Resources: Section Three Because individuals have fewer opportunities to speak in large groups, and because the majority of responses to any given statement will be nonverbal, the possibility of intimidation, bullying, condescension, and tribalism is higher in a large group discussion than in a small group discussion. These unspoken power dynamics often relate to pre-existing social distinctions such as race, gender, economic status, hobbies or fashion or interests, and more. Challenge 4. The difficulty of staying on track Discussions are two or more people seeking a single, unknown truth together, but being together is hard for larger groups. That’s because when anyone has a good idea, it’s hard to let it go. And since it takes longer for any given individual to have an opportunity to talk, they tend to hold onto old ideas, and say them whenever they get a chance, whether or not it fits with the current ideas being discussed. Then, one unconnected comment is often felt as justification for another unconnected comment. The group starts jumping around from thought to thought. Instead of working together to find a single truth, the discussion turns into a forum for voicing opinions, affirmations, and rebuttals. Challenge 5. The ease of hiding, parroting, or performance When group members have fewer opportunities to talk, and when taking those opportunities is voluntary, a large variety of counterproductive behaviors becomes significantly easier. For example, if a group member is inclined to say as little as possible, or keep a low social profile, she or he will have every opportunitiy to decline participation. Or, if one is inclined to perform for groups of people, soliciting shock or laughter or admiration, she or he will have ample opportunities to slip a joke or shocking assertion or demonstration of dominance into the conversation. Or, if one is inclined to only act in safe ways Difficult Discussions 75 Discussing the Bible Introduction discussing the Bible fits with grace, faith, and Christ perfectly. We can tell we work with great organizations, because when we introduce them to discussion, their frequent first desire is to discuss the Bible. Yet Bible discussions afford unique challenges. At Wheatstone, we’ve found that even very experienced Mentors can struggle with them. To discuss the Bible, group members need to put off fears and search for God. While we don’t expect leading Bible discussions to become immediately easy after reading these tips, we do hope to give you a head start on helping your group discuss the Bible well. Here’s what we’ve learned. 1. The Bible is the best book to discuss. Discussion seeks Truth, and the Bible presents Him to us. It’s easily one of the most beautiful books in the world. It calls people to goodness. It calls us to God. The Spirit of God resides in it, and he resides in us, connecting us to it. It calls us to the humility, love, honesty, faith, hope, and clarity that discussions need in order to thrive. Both because it empowers discussion and because it is the perfect guide for discussion, the Bible is clearly the best book to discuss. 2. For Christians, the Bible is often the hardest book to discuss. Time and time again, we’ve found that Bible discussions have difficulty getting off the ground. Wheatstone students have a hard time being who they are and saying what they think when they’re discussing the Bible. It feels safer to perform, or to act in merely received ways. Why is it so hard? Here are a three of the things that frequently get in the way. Group members have heard one or two interpretations of the Bible reiterated many, many times, but it’s hard to say what you think when you’ve heard so much. It’s probably pretty familiar to you: church-going Christians sometimes mix up what their pastor says with what the Bible says, because they’ve just heard so many sermons. In the same way, church-going Christians ca mix up what they think with what their pastor says, because it’s easier to memorize someone else’s good ideas than do the hard work of making one’s own. One of the four steps to discussing well is saying what you think, not just what you’ve been told. When discussing the Bible, that’s very hard. Group members are trained to move quickly to personal application, but understanding requires patience. Right application only follows right understanding. Habits of personal application are generally good, but they can sometimes become excuses for impatience with the slow work of deeply, lovingly understanding God’s truth. In the context of discussion, we need to wait to apply God’s Word to our lives until after we’ve gained some greater understanding of it. 3. As a discussion leader, your job is to help students overcome these hurdles. As you do that, here are some tips and big ideas to keep in mind. Group members are afraid of getting it wrong, but fear inhibits inquiry. Calm your group’s fears and pray. Most people won’t think it’s worth it to try to understand the Bible if it means risking their salvation, their inclusion in a church, or their confidence in God. And they would be right. But though it sometimes feels like it, disucssion doesn’t risk salvation, because our salvation isn’t based on getting the right answers. And though it’s sometimes difficult, nearness to God is more important than inclusion in one of his communities. Finally, though confidence feels like faith, they’re different. We aren’t saved by confidence. We’re saved by grace, through faith, in Christ, and 82 Resources: Section Three Remind group members that God lets us make mistakes. If he forgives our sins, how much more will he show grace for our errors! Remind group members that salvation is by faith, through grace, in Christ, not by accurate knowledge. Help group members learn to confront their biblical confusion and seek biblical understanding out of love for Christ, in the same way one would desire to learn Difficult Discussions 83 resources: section four After Discussion 87 Asessing and Grading Your Discussion Group Introduction Any student-led or method-based pedagogy presents assessment challenges to a responsible teacher. What’s more, each school submits itself to a different set of quantifiable and qualitative standards. Recognizing this diversity of needs, our approach in this section is to point out “opportunity points” for assessment. Any of the following could be meaningful reference points for tracking growth, but any number of them may also be inappropriate reference points in your particular context. By comparing these opportunities to your school’s assessment standards, you may form a personalized strategy for tracking individual and class progress. Since discussion thrives on freedom, we recommend using as few of these assessment opportunities as is necessary for the health of your class, the success of your discussions, and/or submission to school standards. Err on the side of less assessment, rather than more. 1. Opportunity Points for Assessment Students may be quantifiably and qualitatively assessed in many ways both before and after a discussion, and in many qualitative ways during a discussion. Preparation Students can be required to complete any number of assessment-friendly activities that also contribute to the success of upcoming discussions. Questions Did the student come to class with questions about the common text? Did the student craft their questions according to a pre-described form? Are the student’s questions substantial? Do the student’s questions directly relate to specific points within the text? Participation We recommend using Participation as the weightiest assessment category in your rubric, since all other assessible categories are essentially referential to it. Note that Participation is almost always a qualitative assessment category, and that quantitative assessment approaches to Participation - such as marking the number of times that individual students speak - are counter-productive to the goals of discussion for transformation. Treating this section of your student’s educational experience of discussion as exclusively qualitative, therefore, is entirely legitimate. Rather than using quantitative measures, observe the following qualitative characteristics when assigning a Participation grade. Attention Does the student actively combat apathy, showing her peers due respect and constantly following the discussion with an interest in its conclusion? Wonder Does the student demonstrate spirited engagement with discussion questions, allowing curiosity to direct her creative efforts to find answers? These include: Common Text Did the student fully complete the common text before class? Partially complete it? Notes Did the student take sufficient notes on the common text before class? Did the student complete notes according to a pre-described form? Do the student’s notes exhibit sufficient insight into the common text? 88 Resources: Section Four Mastery Does the student demonstrate mastery of the common text, regularly referring the group to pertinent points within it or using it to find synthesizing answers to complex questions? Logic Are the student’s arguments sound, and does the student recognize sound arguments when she hears them? After Discussion 89 Go Deeper: Spiritually Assessing a Discussion Group How do you know when a discussion group is working well? Since discussions are ultimately for the sake of being transformed in Christ-likeness, healthy discussion groups are those in which each member models Christ. As a tool and aid for group assessment, therefore, here are eight ways that Christ taught. They’re helpful categories for addressing each member’s strengths and weaknesses, and they might help you identify new ways to grow together. Christ came by emptying himself Christ emptied himself as he stooped down to join us in community. When a group faces a new discussion, each member should work to clear away preconceived ideas, go-it-alone proficiencies, agendas, pride, and biases. Each person should arrive at the discussion with a willingness to receive new truths, and to be changed by what the community discovers. Ask yourself and each other: Am I willing to suspend judgment for the sake of our group finding new truths? Do I have difficulty letting go of my ideas about the text to make room for others? Ask yourself and each other: Do I always think my ideas are the best? Have I made a habit of disregarding someone else’s questions or ideas? Christ worked and sacrificed for the good of others Christ taught us to actively seek the good of our neighbor. A discussion is a place to practice this. Remember: the discussion does not exist to serve you alone, but your whole community, and you need to make sure that others in your community are accounted for. Ask yourself and each other: Am I trying to help others in my group in their pursuit of truth? Do I tend to gallop ahead of my group, or stay behind, leaving the others? Christ fearlessly confronted falsehood and error Christ entered the community, fully Christ taught us to live out our convictions with courage. In your discussion group, you need to be willing to challenge the ideas that you hear. Don’t allow fear of conflict stop you. Since people are different than their ideas, you can challenge ideas without confronting individuals. You can challenge with love. When Christ came to teach us, he presented all of himself. A good group is one in which each member comes ready to serve and participate. They will work to eliminate distractions to allow the community to really be with one another. Ask yourself and each other: Am I correcting falsehood or error when I hear it? Am I unwilling to challenge the ideas of someone in my group because of guilt, fear, or shame? Ask yourself and each other: Do I enter into my discussion community fully, or do I withhold myself in some way? Am I “zoning out” during discussion? Am I a distraction to others in any way? Do I practice active listening and attentive posture? Christ spoke with precision as he taught Christ regarded others as more important than himself Christ taught us to regard others as more important than ourselves, then modeled it for us. In discussion, each member should regard the ideas and questions of the other members with respect and dignity. As you discuss, consider others (and what they have to say) as valuable and necessary. 94 by Chad Glazener Resources: Section Four Whenever he referenced Scripture or culture, Christ was precise. He set forth clear premises for his arguments, even if his conclusions were sometimes hard to draw. A discussion group can advance toward their goal together when they seek precision. Work on defining your terms, and strive to speak what you know. Ask yourself and each other: Are my words matching my thoughts? Am I being too vague when I speak, so as to be misunderstood? Am I being consistent with my terms? After Discussion 95 Christ had compassion on those whom he taught Christ was led by compassion when he taught the crowds. When you are discussing together, each person ought to be sympathetic to the needs of every other person. Ultimately, your discussion community should consider the needs of each person ahead of the needs of the discussion. Ask yourself and each other: Have I been sensitive to the emotional needs of each person in my group? Do I help draw “real world” conclusions for our group? Christ was patient with those whom he taught Christ was patient with his disciples, even when they didn’t seem to understand what he meant. In your discussion group, each person should continue to move forward, no matter what. Even in exhaustion, confusion, or disagreement, your group should patiently plod forward, without giving up or tossing anyone aside. Ask yourself and each other: Am I being patient? Am I “checking out” of discussion when it feels laborious, boring, or off-track? How does my frustration manifest during discussion? 96 Resources: Section Four 97 resources: section five Articles from The Examined Life 99 The Examined Life Monthly Resources by Wheatstone What is The Examined Life? The Examined Life is a monthly e-magazine that encourages Christians to examine their lives and explore God’s world. It’s made by the community of thinkers at Wheatstone for Christian high school students, their parents, and their educators. Comprised of one introductory video, three Examine articles, and four Explore articles, each issue contains ideas and inspiration to carry you through a month of growth. It’s a great resource for small groups, and a winsome mix of theology, philosophy, arts, stories, and cultural insight that you won’t find elsewhere. This next section of your booklet includes articles from The Examined Life or Wheatstone blogs. They’re about teaching and learning, with an emphasis on doing both through discussion. They are available online in the issue indicated. Let us know what you think at tel@wheatstoneministries.com. Articles from The Examined Life 101 How to Discuss: Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love Wheatstone’s summer conference just ended. It was a week of great seminars, workshops, cultural events, and (maybe most importantly) small group discussions. I love to walk around the conference campus and see clusters of students or educators discussing hard ideas with a Wheatstone mentor. Intent faces. Wild hand gestures. “But what does it mean to be noble?” a sincere belief that, together, their group might find the answer to a question that’s bigger than they are. They don’t believe this because they’re interacting with experts, or with exceptional human beings. They believe it because real discussion with other humans is perhaps the most deep and meaningful way to find God’s truth. No matter who those humans are. No matter what. By the end of the week Wheatstone mentors are completely exhausted, but even at our staff party—with interns and managers and mentors sprawled asleep on every horizontal surface—they keep on discussing. And then, well, they discuss some more. Last night, a few of us spent another four hours talking about education. Again. Tomorrow, I’ll be discussing Coriolanus with them. Again. Why? Because we really, truly believe in it. We see it as essential to our own growth—essential to a life characterized by imitating Christ and pursuing truth. You probably caught my loophole. I managed a sweep into inspiring generalities because of a lovely little adjective: real discussion. You see, just talking doesn’t make the cut, and neither do plenty of other things that we think of as discussions. Discussions are, admittedly, a little bit crazy. Especially the kinds of discussions we have with students at Wheatstone, where handpicked high-quality mentors try to find truth with a group of high school students—most of whom have never had long discussions before, have just read a philosophical text for the first time, aren’t used to hearing open questions, and, in many ways, are simply young. Every mentor comes into those discussions, not with performance goals for the students, not with expected outcomes, not with prearranged intellectual tracks, but rather with 102 Resources: Section Five I could say a lot about what makes a discussion “real.” I could say that it’s real when the discussants are honestly relying on each other in the search for truth. I could say that it’s real when discussants truly say what they think (and not just what they think they ought to think, or what they think others want them to think). I could say that it’s real when discussants strive to be who they are, no more and no less. I could say that it’s real when discussants don’t identify with their ideas. I could say that it’s real when discussants think highly of one another. I could say that it’s real when discussants are truly interacting with the same things as each other. I could say that it’s real when discussants don’t compete. And, in fact, I just did. But what I want to dive into deeply here is how real discussion relies on three key virtues without which it cannot by Peter David Gross Published at Patheos.com/blogs/Scriptorium, July 2012 keep going. “Real” discussion requires faith, hope, and love. Discussions require faith. One of the biggest impediments to real discussion is a group’s inability to walk along the same intellectual path together. One person accepts one set of ideas and starts tinkering with them, while another person accepts a different set and tinkers with those, while a third person mopes about the fact that the first two’s sets are different, and a fourth decides that, well, everyone must be wrong. Everyone is in the room, everyone’s thinking, and everyone may be talking, but no one is really discussing. You aren’t really discussing until you’re together. And being together like that requires faith. It requires that the whole group find things to affirm together and use together in their pursuit of truth. Christian intellectual prescription because it’s essential to humble, communal thought of any kind. Intellectual activity without faith must be solitary, must be expert, and must be systematized. That kind of intellectual activity isn’t bad; it’s very, very good. But it isn’t discussion. Discussion requires faith, because it only happens when people are walking along a single intellectual path together. Discussions require hope. Since discussions don’t necessarily build off of a system of certainty that’s pushing them forward, they need a different motive force. They need to be pulled from ahead. If you’re engaging in discussion as a method for finding truth, you’re acting on the off-chance that truth is the sort of thing that humans are made to find together, and that it’s somewhere just up ahead. You’re hoping. For that reason, an insistence on continuous certainty by any discussion group member is absolutely fatal to discussion’s progress. In order to think together, discussants must be willing to say “well, okay,” to ideas they don’t definitively know. They must remember the ideas so they can return to them critically should it turn out they aren’t helpful. And discussants must use the ideas, moving boldly forward. Without a hope that reality’s out there waiting to be apprehended by bands of companions who help each other out, the whole process is simply inefficient, or else merely good for people who aren’t good enough on their own. Without hope, discussion depends on expertise. And as soon as discussion depends on expertise, it’s susceptible to the accusation of slowing experts down. ”Why should I spend the time to explain this to you?” Augustine prescribed the intellectual orientation “faith seeking understanding” as eminently Christian, but it’s not a Christian orientation because we need it in order to justify our Christianity’s irrational bits. Our faith doesn’t have any of those. No, it’s an eminently On the contrary, real discussion is a practice in a kind of humility: a self-submission to an upahead goal that you don’t yet see. Since you don’t yet see it, and since humans are the sorts of things that are for finding reality, you can look to any discussion partner and say, “Maybe Articles from The Examined Life 103 How to Discuss: Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love by Peter David Gross they’re about to say truth! Maybe, in the very next moment, the Spirit of God will speak through them!” You never know, and that’s why it’s wonderful. If you begin operating with that hope, really expecting your discussion partners to reveal God’s truths, you’ll be amazed how frequently you’re rewarded, and how frequently it comes from sources you might have otherwise dismissed. “Out of the mouths of babes” (and high schoolers…), as they say. Discussions require love. As in Christian living, so in real discussions: the greatest of these three virtues is love. Faith is the process of discussion, and hope is its motivation, but love is its motion, power, and activity. Real discussions spring out of a trusting love between discussants and a passionate love for the object of their search. Real discussions continue because of a searching love between discussants and an enduring love for the object of their search. Real discussions result in a mature love between discussants and an abiding love for truth. It’s everything Seriously. How will you persist in attentively, humbly listening to anyone without loving them? It’s so hard to understand what people mean/feel/wish/do! And when you spend as much time with people as discussion requires, you’ll pretty much inevitably find things about them that rub you the wrong way. You’re not going to keep going, or start going, or finish well, unless you love the people around you in spite of their seeming flaws. 104 Resources: Section Five Of course, if you insist on loving the people with whom you discuss, you’ll end up discovering that they’re lovely. Flaws may present themselves first or flashingly, but the image of God is deepest and truest. In discussion, you really get to glimpse it. Finally, you won’t get anywhere in discussion—or anywhere further than a therapy circle would get—unless you decide to love the thing you all are looking for. Some people poorly rephrase this idea as “You’ve got to care about it,” or “You need to want to discuss.” Those are close, but too little and too light. You have to throw your love out ahead of you into the thick of your question and risk getting no response, or you’ll not search honestly, piercingly, and constantly. I cannot say beautifully enough what the love that discussion produces is like. My deepest friends are usually the ones with whom I’ve discussed the most, because I’ve seen them, and they’ve seen me, and we’ve shared the world between us. What’s more, my abiding wonder at the world was built up, facet by facet, by struggling to see the world with those friends. Because I’ve discussed, this world gets lit constantly by the memory of shared labor with good women and men, and by the deep order that our labor helps me to see. I pray more fluently, and I worship more freely—impetuously, even—because of this love that discussion produces. That’s the sum of it: discussions, first and last, require love. 105 The Mentor Model of Education Teaching is not what you think it is. If you’ve had the chance to hear Taylor Mali perform his piece What Teachers Make, or read Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, you might catch a glimpse of it. Neither of those pieces is G-rated, and that should give you another piece of the puzzle. Teachers deal with their students in the most crucial years of their lives. I always tell my nonteacher friends that teaching high school is a privilege because I get to watch my students become human. I don’t mean to disparage junior highers with that statement (though I have noticed an alarming similarity between lunch time at the junior high and feeding time at the zoo). What I mean is that in those formative years, my students go from being someone’s son or daughter to being someone. Educational psychology tells us that students begin to make ideas their own during this stage of development. That explains why most teens seem to argue like they’re back in their terrible twos. Part of making something your own is rejecting anything that’s not. For parents and teachers alike, this can be a frustrating time. But we should embrace it. Their souls are waking up, and teaching is most exciting, and most effective, when we can come alongside them and encourage their questions. It can be its worst when we simply try to answer them. John Dewey pioneered a model of education he called experimentalism. He believed that students could only genuinely learn through exploration, and he sought a middle way between the professor model, wherein the 106 Resources: Section Five by Lindsay Marshall The Examined Life, July 2010 teacher merely spouts information to a group of consumers who then memorize and regurgitate it, and the child-centered model, in which the learner directs his own learning and the teacher practices little if any leadership at all. Instead, Dewey’s theories created Project Based Learning, a method that put the learner in the role of researcher with the teacher as an experienced guide. It’s brilliant, an idea designed to liberate the learner from dependence on authority, and it works especially well with teenagers who are already beginning that process. It’s easy to sell in science class. It’s hard to find anyone who would argue that it’s better to lecture students on theory than to guide them through experiments that prove it. But when it comes to history, literature, Bible, philosophy, and other liberal arts, we insist on reverting to the professorial model. Ironically, Dewey’s theory, what we at Wheatstone call the mentorship model, applies best in the liberal arts, where it is least welcome. The mentorship model of teaching is ideal for a number of reasons. First, it has the best chance of achieving the holy grail of learning: students taking ownership of knowledge. There’s plenty of educational psychology to back it up, but it’s easy to see how much easier it is to remember something if you’ve figured it out for yourself. The process is vital to understanding, and when we deprive students of the process by merely handing out facts, we rob them of the chance to absorb the lesson personally. This is why Socrates infuriatingly refused to answer his students’ questions outright. When Meno casually asked “Tell me, Socrates, is virtue acquired by teaching or by practice?” Plato records that Socrates responded by asking what virtue is, without knowing the answer himself. By investigating together, they got closer to the truth. And that’s another good reason to follow the mentorship model. None of us knows everything. Speaking as a voice of authority as though the matter is closed is disingenuous at best. At worst, we risk becoming sophists who make our students wholly dependent on ourselves for knowledge. Plato called that the worst kind of slavery. The only Person we know of Who did have perfect knowledge spent most of His time with His disciples asking questions and telling obtuse stories. If our Lord chose to teach that way, it seems wise to follow His example. The most important reason to adopt the mentorship model, however, is that we are beings with souls who are created to exist in community. Educational psychology tells us that students tend to learn much better in cooperative groups than in isolation, and even Proverbs reminds of the basic principle that “iron sharpens iron.” We are relational beings, and no matter how hard we might try to hide it, teachers learn as much from their students as they do from us. It only makes sense to be honest about that and use it to build relational learning in the classroom. Ideally, we should all sit under an olive tree all day discussing big ideas. But (I don’t know about you) my classroom is tragically short of arboreal delights, and I can’t throw out the required curriculum to talk about the meaning of life. It can be frustratingly difficult to incorporate the mentorship model in the traditional classroom, but if we want to nurture our students’ emerging souls, we must find a way. At its core, mentorship is all about the relationship, but it can be tricky to steer the pedagogical ship between the Scylla of the professor spouting knowledge and the Charybdis of the buddy-buddy camp counselor. But good teaching is like good dance instruction. When a skilled teacher leads a class, she dances with them as they learn. Here are some tips for building mentorship into the traditional classroom: 1. Invest your time. Like anything worth doing, mentorship takes time. We have to view our students as individual beings who bear God’s image, not just the thirty juniors in history class. High schoolers can smell insincerity leagues away, and it takes effort to convince them that you care about them, not the idea of caring about them (especially if you’re in a Christian school where every chapel speaker who doesn’t know them from Adam starts by saying he or she really cares about them). In my AP Government and AP US History classes, we have movie nights, tailgate parties for political events, current events discussions, and Starbucks study sessions. None of these activities, even the study sessions, make any noticeable difference in the students’ scores on the AP exams, but they are invaluable for Articles from The Examined Life 107 The Mentor Model of Education Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love by Lindsay Marshall creating a community of learners and helping me find out who my students are, what they love, what they fear, and what they want to learn. They are also more fun than you can imagine. 2. Be a learner… and a participant. Many teachers try to remain neutral, especially in political discussions, and never let their students know what they really believe. There are some good educational arguments for that, but that is utterly detrimental to the mentorship model. Can you imagine trying to have a political discussion with someone who refuses to tell you what he really thinks? The discussion would remain sterile and pointless… like most classroom discussions. It’s vital for the teacher to be fully involved in expressing opinion, then presenting convincing evidence to counter it (lest the class turn into lemmings!), and model thoughtful exploration of ideas. This means the teacher must also admit when she’s wrong or ignorant of the facts. Above all, the teacher has to give up control of the discussion’s conclusions. A true discussion doesn’t have a forgone conclusion. 3. Embrace complexity. Class periods are artificial blocks of time. If the discussion isn’t over when the bell rings, that’s fine. It’s an opportunity for students to continue it in the halls on their way to the next class. Encourage them to bring up further thoughts they had the next time you meet. If a teacher sets up big concepts from the beginning of the year, the students 108 Resources: Section Five figure out that the conversation isn’t limited to one lesson, one unit, even one school year, and they begin to incorporate investigation into their daily lives. Don’t let them settle for easy answers. There are very few things we can know with Cartesian certainty, and they’re all boring. Push the student to think past their first conclusions, and rock the boat with conflicting evidence when the class is in agreement. Train them never to settle for less in their pursuit of the truth. 4. Remind them why you’re doing this. A lot. Centuries of traditional schooling have trained students to be consumers of information. It can be frustrating to ask them to play by new rules. Tell them why you’re doing it. Explain the theology of the soul, the methodology behind the mentorship model, and the big picture. Grades are arbitrary—we can make the numbers say whatever we want. Wisdom isn’t. Convince them to care about the one that matters. Remember that this is hard, but it’s worth it. And it’s not revolutionary. It is, in fact, an ancient form of education. According to Plato, Socrates said “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” If Socrates was willing to lay down his life for this truth, we could stand to follow his example. 109 Information + Passivity = Slavery What is an education? Nice Socratic question, no? A philosophically precise discussion of it would require a Platonic-dialogue-length discourse and a much more talented author than this one. Fortunately, the good people at The Examined Life have given me permission to occasionally compromise Platonic philosophical precision in the interest of fitting my articles into 5,000 words or less. So let’s aim for a rough-and-ready practical definition of education instead, shall we? Let’s say that an education is the process by which you grow and develop intellectually by means of outside influences and your own efforts. Put in work and time, add some expertise and guidance from teachers and peers, and the end result is an educated you! A doctor, at the end of four years of college, four more of medical school, two years of residency, and another few of subspecialty training, has not only accumulated vast amounts of vital medical knowledge—How many fingers is the average human being born with?—but has also spent upwards of a decade practicing the discipline and commitment necessary to be a good doctor at 4 a.m. when a patient comes in with some of those fingers missing. Written as an equation, you could say Music Lessons + Hours of Practice + A Dash of Talent 110 Resources: Section Five = Accomplished Pianist, by Naomi Geier The Examined Life, October 2012 around; then move ahead to the next level. ranging from cave paintings to the works of Shakespeare. A brief digression in defense of information or Platonic Dialogue + Mentor + Willingness to Beat Your Brains Out in Discussion for 3 Hours = Wheatstone Student, or, sadly more common for most of us, Apparently-Insignificant Content + Disengaged Student = Boredom, Apathy, and Intellectual Sluggishness. (This, of course, is where the trouble starts.) Most of the education you’ve received in this day and age—almost all of it, in fact—has probably been geared almost exclusively toward giving you information. It looks kind of like this: Information + More Information + Still More Information + Just Enough Time to Swallow It All = An Education. Our educational systems, even the best of them, tend to reinforce the message that to succeed in school, the most important skill is rapid consumption of information and the ability to disgorge it on command. Regurgitate accurately and eloquently when exams come Mind you, regurgitation metaphors aside, this model of education is not entirely bad. It is a very good and very important thing to accumulate information. How good? Really, really good. How could you know what over-the-counter medications not to mix if you didn’t read the labels, or which political candidates to vote for if you didn’t know their positions? Every choice we make is informed by the information we possess, so your actions will always be affected by the quality of that information. Good intentions will get you a long way in many cases, but if you plant tulip bulbs upside down or accidentally brush your teeth with lotion instead of toothpaste, the results will be predictable and almost certainly undesirable. So factual knowledge is good because it’s useful; that’s pretty obvious. But there’s also a compelling defense to be made even for the types of informational knowledge you probably won’t use very often in daily life, like how to solve a quadratic equation or what countries border Estonia. I call this the “What-a-wonderful-world” defense: we have this amazing, complex, beautiful universe to explore, all God’s handiwork and all reflecting His glory, not to mention thousands of years of human history and creative artifacts In short, if God saw fit to make it, it will probably be tremendously exciting once you learn to look at it properly, and if your fabulous fellow human sub-Creators made it, you’d better investigate very thoroughly before declaring it unworthy of your time, lest you end up thinking Hamlet is too boring for you when really you’re too boring for Hamlet. To wrap up the digression: Information is wonderful. Yes? Definitely. And in fact, the problem I’m hinting at wouldn’t be nearly so serious if information weren’t so desperately important. But what do we do with it? The problem with the above equation, of course, is its lopsidedness: there’s too much information in your education and not nearly enough time spent teaching you the skills to know what to do with it. The main skills this type of education teaches you, as described above, are 1) rapid absorption of facts and 2) proving to your teachers that you’ve absorbed them sufficiently. That’s all well and good, and I’m not calling for the abolition of tests—how else will we know if you know which way a tulip bulb should be planted?—but it’s not enough. Articles from The Examined Life 111 Information + Passivity = Slavery Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love by Naomi Geier Why isn’t it enough? Because those two skills aren’t actually very important for “real life”—for functioning as an intellectual adult in the world out there. How often will you have to learn a whole bunch of facts really quickly? Not very. How often will you need to convince a teacher that you have? Almost never. But the real issue is that you will need certain other skills that just plain don’t get taught in the information-dump model of education, which will leave you in the very dangerous (yes, dangerous) state: possessing a mind that is filled with information but unable to know what to do with it. And being full of information, bolstered by false confidence (you were a good student, after all), and being incapable of wielding it properly is sort of like being a well-intentioned bull in an intellectual china shop… But metaphors may be breaking down a bit here, so let’s just consider the various possible outcomes in real-world terms. Possible outcomes: The best case In the best-case scenario, your effectiveness will be compromised because you’ll know about lots of things without really knowing how to use them. Ask your parents about their experience with baby-care books, for instance. It’s not that the knowledge isn’t helpful, but rather that it just isn’t sufficient for the burping, nursing, no-don’t-touch-that!, so-this-is-what-colic-is, I-haven’t-slept-in-threedays-and-I-may-be-losing-my-mind reality. This is fairly self-explanatory: book knowledge isn’t the same as the ability to apply it, and if you have loads of “book knowledge” and very little practical “know-how,” you’ll have a lot of 112 Resources: Section Five catching up to do when the real world hits. Possible outcomes: The likely case But that’s just the best-case scenario. Here’s what else is likely: When your entire education revolves around your ability to absorb information, you become habituated to ignoring any kinds of thinking that get in the way of that process. If you stop to ask why all life forms on Earth are carbon-based, instead of just memorizing the fact and moving on, you may gain a very interesting intellectual project for the evening, but you will lose the time you needed to prep for tomorrow’s chemistry test. Interrogation of an idea usually slows down your acceptance of it or of others like it, so it’s given almost no priority in a scholastic system where speedy memorization is what counts most. Bottom line: with this type of education, you simply won’t get in the habit of questioning others or yourself. In fact, you might get in the habit of suppressing that kind of interrogation because it gets in the way of what you’ve been taught is most important. You’ll become a person who asks “Should I think this?” or “Why do I think this?” or “What are the implications of these facts?” less and less… And wow, is that ever a problem, because it turns out that asking those sorts of questions is the numberone most important activity for living as an intellectual adult. This type of thinking can be described as intellectual flexibility, and it’s actually a lot like physical flexibility. Remember the old fable about the oak tree and the reed? When a hurricane comes along, it’s much better to be the latter than the former—a little flexibility generally beats a lot of brute strength (or information) when the going gets tough. Especially when you consider that human beings have this wonderful talent for being totally and utterly wrong about things. Remember Y2K? The Flat Earth Society? Life before germ theory? Given that human knowledge is necessarily imperfect and the world is an ever-more-confusing place, the ability to interrogate your ideas and those of others is absolutely and totally crucial. How do you know if you’re failing at this? Sadly, it will have some fairly unpleasant manifestations in your personality. People who lack intellectual adaptability tend to turn out in one of two ways: they either clam up intellectually and avoid all conflict like the plague, or they start treating everyone who disagrees with them as intellectual enemies and inferiors. In short, they become narrowminded. And being well-informed won’t do you any good if you’re narrow-minded. It just makes you an intellectual slave to your informers. you’ll get used to accepting what you hear, but gradually, as you get older, you’ll filter what you hear until it’s what you want to hear. Believe me when I tell you this is in no way an overstatement: over time, you will build an ever-more-rigid catalogue of “trusted sources” and almost instantaneously dismiss anything that comes from somewhere or someone else. In fact, you won’t even know what you think until you know what the authorities of your subculture think. You’ll never form your own opinions about political catastrophes, new medical technologies, changes in the Church, or anything else; you’ll wait to hear what your pastor/parents/friends/politicians/pundits have to say and then parrot their positions back to yourself. And the more you do that, the more you’ll become a caricature of yourself as your prejudices exaggerate and your filters become smaller and smaller. The choice is not between growing and staying the same; the choice is between keeping pace with the world or inevitably shrinking further and further into yourself as the world grows and changes. To avoid this, what you need from your education, in short, is training in how to think well. Intellectual slavery Finding freedom You see, when you are unable to properly evaluate the ideas you receive, you are at the mercy of (1) whoever has most recently informed you of anything and (2) your own prejudices. Those prejudices are sneaky, too; Because of the severity of the problems that result from becoming an unreflective thinker, education should be more of a training ground than an information source. Information is Articles from The Examined Life 113 Information + Passivity = Slavery Have Faith, Have Hope, Have Love by Naomi Geier always out there—we live in an age named after it, after all—so school should teach you what to do with it. This includes (but is not limited to): how to gather information responsibly, how to analyze it, how to hold your own opinions, how to listen carefully to opinions you disagree with, and how to reject your own opinions when they turn out to be false. Those latter two, if you could master them, would make you an extremely wise man or woman. And if you’re not getting this training in your classrooms—and almost none of us is getting it as much as we need—here are some basic principles and pieces of advice to help you supplement: 1. Make sure you choose to spend time with people who will force you to be mentally flexible and self-reflective. This is perhaps the most important thing you could do. Find the smartest friends you’ve got who disagree with you about crucial issues and ask them to tell you everything about their positions. Get reading recommendations from them and follow up with questions and objections. And if you can, ask them to poke holes in your arguments. They may convince you about some things and you may convince them about others. You’ll find yourselves in a wonderful mutually-edifying upward spiral when this really gets going. 114 Resources: Section Five 2. Read Great Books. Nothing can beat down the door of a mind that’s determined to lock itself up like a fortress, but the words of the most brilliant people alive over centuries worth of human experience make a pretty awesome battering ram. Their worlds were very different from yours, which in a way makes their positions all the more valuable; having experienced things you’ve never experienced, they can provide you a window on issues you otherwise might never have considered. (Think about how different your life is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s or Edmund Spenser’s.) Oh, and pay especially close attention to writers who think about thinking, like Plato, and imitate their methods of intellectual exploration. That type of advice, if sound, is timeless. 3. Read things you don’t understand because you don’t understand them. A mind that is not stretching itself is a mind that is growing weaker all the time. Don’t worry; your mind is made to grow stronger, just like your body and your soul. The more you push yourself, the more you’ll grow. this one happen: get a logic textbook, find someone who can teach you, or use online resources. 5. And finally, ask questions all the time and keep track of them. It’s the basic principle at the heart of it all. Maybe you could start with this one: What kinds of questions are actually useful for the examination of ideas? A life of disciplined, enthusiastic intellectual activity is what we’re after here, one supported by a mind that’s both well-trained and perpetually curious. Passivity is the polar opposite of curiosity, and its mortal enemy. The English word passive is from the Latin root “to suffer,” while curiosity comes from the Latin root curia, “to care”—a very active verb indeed. The difference between the two attitudes is the difference between being the subject and the object of your own life—that is to say, acting or being acted upon. Are you creating or consuming? Expecting or exploring? Loving or lounging? The choice is yours to make. 4. Learn the basic rules of logic. Logical thinking is good thinking, so this is a killer piece of advice that will get you in great shape for everything else you ever do intellectually. Do whatever you can to make Articles from The Examined Life 115 Teach Like Heaven is Real Christian hope applies to everything. It doesn’t just apply to politeness or evangelism or devotional times. It doesn’t just apply to church. It fits with everything. If you learn to see, Christian hope can limn everything you encounter and everything you do with the glory of Christ’s impending return. Your hellos and goodbyes can be lit by it. Your waking and your sleeping can be lit. Everything. It applies not least of all to your classroom or your youth room. Christian hope could stuff that place like tabernacle smoke and change the way you act inside it. That’s more than an inspiring sentiment; it means action. Christian hope, when honestly applied to your work, simply will transform it. I think the main reason that honest Christian hopes remain unapplied to work, or to any area of life, is a simple absence of imagination. We don’t sit around thinking, “How does Christ’s return in glory impact this, here, now?” But we could! Here, I’ll try to help. I’ll offer five declarations about youth work that come from thinking about it side-by-side with Christ’s coming glory—five declarations with the potential to transform. 1. Because of Christ’s coming glory, your subject matters. I often talk to Christian music teachers, art teachers, math teachers—anyone but Bible teachers, really–who feel a need to defend the importance of their field within a Christian framework. They feel allowed but not affirmed by the larger Christian community, as if their vocations were frivolous. Youth pastors who 116 Resources: Section Five spend time on anything other than theology, evangelism, or things that get students into seats for theology and evangelism (like rock bands, scavenger hunts, and cricket spitting) can feel likewise marginalized. If you, like them, feel defensive, frivolous, or marginal in your youth work then this declaration is for you. Your subject, no matter what it is, is not marginal, because Christ’s kingship is total. The man who comes to rule the world is the God who made it, atom by atom, soul after soul, nothing left out. You can’t study something or create something that doesn’t proceed from his creative work, because he created everything. This Creator God will rule, will save, will make all things new. Christ doesn’t just make us new by his death, resurrection, and ascension. He’s also promised to make a new heaven and earth. He’s out to redeem and rule the whole creation. This one. All of it. Eden lines up with the New Jerusalem, and you and I and the chair you’re sitting on and the bird outside your window each rest on that shining, certain line. Nothing’s an aberration. Everything exists in providence. Everything except the destruction, the perversion, the corruption of things lines up with heaven. Everything lines up. If it’s a thing, it lines up. It will be transformed by Christ’s coming kingship, and its transformation will make it more like itself, not less. Heavenly music will be more musical. Heavenly math will be mathier. Everything will be more itself. Christ is and will be the King of kings, but he’ll also be the King of cobblers, scientists, artists, by Peter David Gross The Examined Life, January 2013 sages, and architects. He’ll rule from a new city on a new earth over a people more beautiful and free than we are now. So, when you practice your craft, study your subject, or write new lyrics for your garage band, you could be practicing exactly the sort of heavenly citizenship you may through everlasting life. Do practice it. The Creator is coming, and he will not abandon the work of his hands. Jesus loves math more than you do. Your imitations of his creativity delight him. This is he who comes. Praise him, and keep on working. 2. Because of Christ’s coming glory, you are not alone. The one in whom you hope is the great Teacher. He is what you are, and that means that whenever you do your work, it’s a kind of fellowship. It’s participation with Christ. What’s more, it means that, as the leader of your vocation, he’ll be finally responsible for the completion of your work. You can let him finish the job. He will finish it. But even now, when completion may not be close, Christ’s return in glory means that you aren’t alone. You must not forget that one of the reasons Christ left was to give us his Spirit. We wait for Christ’s return not as destitute mourners, but as empowered heirs enjoying the first of our inheritance, eagerly anticipating its full revelation. His Spirit, the Spirit of hope, is with you now. As you enter your classroom or youthroom, you are not alone. You are not alone, because, through Christ, you are placed in relationship with the host of all faithful people. You are and will be in rich community with the Kingdom’s greatest teachers and pastors. You are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, who share your work and who share Christ’s love. With the Spirit inside you, the saints around you, and the Rabbi ahead of you, you can rest assured that your work to raise youth up has support. You can be free from any sense of total responsibility for your students, because the community of Spirit, saints, and Son is right beside you. You can trust them, your family through hope, to support you and to establish the works of your hands for the students you love. They will help. You are not alone. 3. Because of Christ’s coming glory, you have all the time. Literally. All the time. As in, everlasting life. Millenium on millenium. You can read all the books. You can watch all the movies. You can become a concert pianist. We can have that conversation we’ve been meaning to have, surely, because we have all the time. When Christ comes and inaugurates his reign on earth, it will be impossible to have missed out on anything of lasting value, and it will be impossible to miss out on anything new. We’ll have all the time. “Christians never say goodbye.” So, don’t be anxious about missing things, neither for you nor for the students you lead. It’s ok if they don’t get everything right now. It’s ok if they don’t experience everything you Articles from The Examined Life 117 Teach Like Heaven is RealHave Faith, Have Hope, Have Love by Peter David Gross hoped. It’s ok if your expectations for this year weren’t reached, because you have all the time, and your students have all the time. Your responsibility is not to cover everything (it’s impossible), but rather to be who you are for your students. Display the exuberance of your love for your topics, or display the power of your confusion. See your students clearly. Love them. Yes, cover what must be covered to meet social standards. Do what your authorities say must be done. Then, cover as much else as you can cover out of love for your students and love for your subject. You can teach from love and not from anxiety or fear, because you and they have all the time. 4. Because of Christ’s coming glory, you can’t quantify your most important successes. This isn’t a rant against quantifiable education. It isn’t a riff on the SAT’s or on setting youth group attendance goals. I believe in those things. Quantifiable successes are awesome. Look for them. Yet, don’t forget that they are secondary. Your students are on their ways to everlasting life, and a low score won’t impede them, except socially for a bit, and a high score won’t speed them, except socially for a bit. See, quantifying human progress is simply a stand-in for our current inability to see other humans’ souls accurately. Did your student make sufficient progress in your field? Who knows? If they take a test, you can make a satisfactory guess. Are you doing a good job reaching youth in your ministry? Who knows? If you count attendance each week, 118 Resources: Section Five you can make a satisfactory guess. But, when Christ comes, we’ll see by means of him. His knowledge of your students won’t be added to by measurements. His certainty about them, and your knowledge about them through him, will be absolutely sufficient in itself, because it will be based on omniscient love. Yet the work’s conclusion is his responsibility. And he is good, and he is mighty, and he is coming. Participate in his educational efforts toward your students, and remember that, in the end, the work is his. Remember the truism: you may never guess the lasting impact you have on your students. You might not even know the impact you have on their knowledge of your field. Whether you’re teaching geometry or pneumatology, the kid who scores lowest at one point may be she for whom the knowledge sticks longest and most efficaciously. But beyond that, your love for a subject and your love for a student simply will spread out through time, making an invisible impact on the world. Those successes are the most important. They’re current participations in everlasting living. And you can’t quantify them. Each of your students may walk in Christ’s kingdom. Each one. There’s nothing that you can do, and nothing that they can do, to render that sentence false. Remember the thief on the cross. So, if you can’t quantify your most important successes, or perhaps know them in any way, how may you face the uncertainty, the ambiguity? Never give up on a student, and always love your students. See that one? There’s hope for her. And that one? There’s hope for him too. And that one? Yes, there’s even—wonder of wonders—hope for him. There is hope for everyone. There’s hope for you. You may face it with triumph and courage. You may rest assured that your work will end fruitfully and well. Why? Because vocational submission to Christ means victory, necessarily. Your students’ education is his work! You are given the blessed opportunity of joining in the work, of adding efforts that really have consequences. 5. Because of Christ’s coming glory, there is hope for everyone. These five are just a beginning. Look to Christ, the author and perfector of your faith, in your classroom or youthroom. That room is in line with his glory, and suffused with its light. Don’t be anxious about anything. If you wait patiently, looking to him while you work, remembering what’s ahead, your work will be transformed. You’ll be freer, and He’ll be King. And, when your students walk in Christ’s kingdom, they may study as much art theory (or whatever) as they want. Get it? There’s hope of salvation for everyone, and there’s also hope of education for everyone! There’s always hope, because the one who is coming is the one who humbled himself infinitely to suffer absolutely to forgive the worst of us. He longs to save. Don’t give up, but also don’t shoulder the weight of your students’ success. You are not their hope. Christ is. That’s why there’s hope for everyone. Christ and Christ alone is sufficient for everyone’s hope. Christ and Christ alone is the overseer of all successes. He’s big enough. Articles from The Examined Life 119 120 121

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