![]() ![]() The notes can be recycled, the textbooks returned, the episode is over, and if students ever email me again they often begin with the distressing phrase, “You may not remember me, but I was in your class.” I already knew that I needed to worry about how classes started. Even if there is sharing of food or stories in the last week of class meetings, the last thing that usually happens is students take an exam, a grade is posted online somewhere for them to find, and after that there is no further interaction. The college classes that I have experienced, on the other hand, typically end with a judgement and a dismissal. God’s favor is spoken over us, and the final note is anticipation that we will continue to walk and grow in faith in the days ahead, that the service is over but its trajectory is not finished. The speech acts that bring things to a meaningful close are “the Lord bless you and keep you” and “go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” or some similar formulation. The church liturgies that I have experienced typically end with a blessing and a commission. 1 As my colleague and I felt our way round ideas about liturgy, time, and teaching, it struck me that there is quite a contrast in how church liturgies and college classes end. I had recently begun to think about time as something given shape in my courses, prompted by Abraham Heschel’s talk of an “architecture of time” in his book on The Sabbath, and by Jonathan Tran’s reflections on what happens when impose our experience of time on others in his book on theologies of memory. ![]() The moment that really got me thinking about this occurred a few years ago, during a conversation with a colleague about liturgy and pedagogy. It has only been more recently that I have started focusing more intentionally on endings, and on what they might mean educationally. I have labored in various ways to get the beginnings right. ![]() Students are consciously or unconsciously assessing how hard the class will be, what it will feel like to be in it, what kind of teacher I am, what kind of human beings surround them. On the first day of class, and in the first week of the semester, first impressions are created that can be hard work to undo. I have been aware for quite a long time of the importance of beginnings for teaching and learning. All the more reason to be thinking consciously about how it will end. None of us are exactly sure what kind of reality awaits us as we disperse. This one sometimes feels as if it is gradually unravelling toward its final whimper. Some semesters build toward a final crescendo of exhaustion and, if all went well, a little satisfaction. Then a spike in COVID infections in the wider population and a state shutdown of schools and universities in response pulled us out of the classroom a week early. We planned to send students home at Thanksgiving and teach the remainder of the semester online. Finally it has found applicability across knowledge (cognitive), skill (psychomotor), and emotion (affective) domains.This semester seems to be ending in stages. It also allows for the conceptualization of lower thought processes (i.e. It fines applicability to learning objectives, teaching objectives, formative and evaluative objectives, and even in question item writing. Furthermore, I think that it is the most widely encompassing theory yet to be used within education. As I had mentioned before, everything I do professionally is built around those constructs. That particular reflection paper, you"ll probably find rather enjoyable (providing you haven't read it yet). My feelings regarding this were strong enough that I devoted a reflection paper solely to this educational strategy, and my essentially failed attempts at incorporating it into my teaching habits back at YSU. It was through the ability to take the educational and theoretical backdrop of educational psychology and weave it into the threads that made up the fabric of our education. What I found most enjoyable is the latitude we were provided as students to help shape the direction of the class as educational psychology applied to our individual endeavors. Although I consider them both to be equitable outcomes of the class. What I found most enjoyable differs from what I find most applicable. Perhaps then this reflection should take on more of a philosophical orientation as a final synopsis of the class. However, here I sit again in front of the computer with the final session just 17 hours away. One would think that after this many years as both a student and teacher in higher education, I would grow accustomed to the rigors of coursework completion and such. Another semester completed in record time. ![]()
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