I've spent today prepping for an Adult Forum I'm leading after church tomorrow, and I've been dipping heavily into my notes from seminary. I know a few of my classmates ditched some or all of their notes at graduation, glad to be done with them, but school geek that I am, I saved ALL of mine, even for the classes I really disliked --like Church History 1.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I only threw away my undergrad notes when I went off to seminary (and then I still saved a few of them). I still have some of my grad school notes, too, I think. In the back of my mind when I was going through things was the thought that if I ever went back to teaching, I would or least might need them.
I'm a good note taker and I've found useful things in old notes, things I'd forgotten that I had once known--or at least been exposed to. Today I've been going through notes from my liturgy classes and felt once again the excitement of being in those classes--they were part theoretical and part practical and they really helped me start feeling like becoming a priest was real.
The other thing I appreciate about going back to old notes is finding how things that I didn't fully grasp or appreciate at the time I see in a whole new way now after having lived with the material in real life for while. That happened sometimes when I was teaching, too--some concept I'd mostly but not completely understood suddenly because crystal clear to me as I thought about how to teach it, thought up new examples to use.
Over the last year I've starting doing more and more teaching at church--mostly in small groups--and I've really been enjoying it I hadn't especially missed teaching, but I'm finding what I am doing now very rewarding. Of course my audience (so to speak) is more motivated and interested than the average first or second year college student, and there's no grading involved :) Even better it motivates me to dig into material that I'm interested in but likely wouldn't take the time to do just on my own. I need external motivation,too.
And now I'd better finish up for tomorrow.
1 comment:
I am your notetaking opposite. I take brief, poor notes and rely on my short- and medium-term memory to get me through. The long-term memory retains what I find interesting/insightful/etc. Then when I'm done with the class, the notes go. The only exception is specialized glossaries that were part of classes I took in grad school. I've only rarely wanted to go back to notes that I no longer have, but I'm not currently working in the field I studied in grad school.
Aren't motivated students great? They really make the teaching experience a whole different ball game.
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