My Teaching Philosophy

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Last week I was duly chuffed to receive a teaching award. I mentioned my “teaching philosophy” in that post, which piqued some curiosity. I thought I would post my teaching philosophy, developed over my decade or so in the classroom and previous decade of youth ministry. True pedagogues will have their own version, even if they haven’t written it down. While mine is informed by research into the art of teaching, I have largely avoided any of the technical terms that teaching scholars use. If you have articulated your own philosophy of teaching–or if you can share it briefly–let us know in the comments below.

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

The Classroom as Space for Transformational Experience

I believe that University should be an encounter. My postsecondary education had a profound impact on my thinking in every area of my life, even though the curriculum was focused in very specific areas. Because of my own experiences as a student, my classroom teaching, and my work in youth leadership, I have come to see education as creating an environment for transformational experiences. My key pedagogical values have developed out of this belief.

The Classroom Space and Vocation

There is a lot of discussion today about the University’s role in shaping students for their work-life. This is a discussion that I have been a part of in my role as a University teacher, government researcher, and student vocational counsellor. We are in a time of great change as the University is being redefined and the global marketplace continues to evolve.

As much as the world around is in a period of accelerated transition, students themselves are also in a period of vast changes and development—perhaps even changing faster than the world around them. While a University education should excel at discipline-specific and interdisciplinary preparation, I believe that our teaching should meet students in the midst of their life journeys. The older idea of vocatio—a sense of calling—can inform our conversations with students as we create classroom space where they can explore who they are, where they fit in the world, and what roles they want to fulfill in personal, family, work, and community life.

Critical Thinking and Inquiry

I have worked hard to engender good student-teacher relationships. With student experience at the centre of my teaching, I intentionally create an atmosphere of “critical empathy” in the classroom. Students are invited to ask any question, knowing they do so within an ongoing personal conversation with colleagues, with the professor, and with the material. The study of religion and literature is ideal for developing the twin skills of critical thinking and inquiry. We want to give our students the space to learn how to ask the right questions and think through the great problems of human experience.

Multi-Modal Education

If the classroom is about creating a space for personal exploration and teaching skills of critical inquiry, what, then, is the role of the academic as “professor”—as one who imparts knowledge?

As we talk about “flipping the classroom,” there is a battle in the world of pedagogy between philosophies of outcome-based or expectation-driven education and a student-centred approach in the classroom. There is also an emerging tension between the university as a protected space for critical inquiry and the university as a job preparation tool.

I do not believe that these philosophies of education are either universally applicable or diametrically opposed. Different courses and programs will have different outcome requirements and explorative opportunities. Indeed, a multi-modal approach to education adapts ongoing exploration of critical ideas with both the tools/methods available and the intention of shaping students to be workplace engaged. The goal is to create an interactive atmosphere that identifies the skills a student can achieve in the classroom while protecting that space for curiosity, inquiry, and critical thinking.

Indeed, those things are precisely the kinds of identifiable skills that employers require. When we combine the ideas of critical inquiry and learning goals, we can create a student experience that allows learners to define their own roles within the educational encounter. That onus on the student for success is still centred in key conversations of Religious Studies—discussions of history, culture, theology, and ideas that make Religious Studies an exciting and broad discipline.

Therefore, I do not feel like it is my job to merely impart knowledge. I do impart knowledge, and my students sometimes feel overwhelmed by the complexity of religious ideas. But my key job is to impart enthusiasm, to excite the imagination, to awaken dreams, and to help students mine the great depths of the human story. Ideally, then, I do not teach classes; instead, I teach students, allowing them to shape their transformational experience as organically as possible while being true to the curriculum.

Relevant Teaching Methods

Practically speaking, this means augmenting the lecture model with other teaching methods, I also must create within the classroom a culture of openness, where the students are safe to share ideas within the educational environment.

Education should be relevant, not just economically and vocationally, but also personally and culturally. I passionately believe that each coming generation—and the generations seem to shorten with time—is charged with the task of changing the world for the better. This seems like a grand statement, but each cohort of students really does stand on the edge of new worlds. The university is a place that shapes the potential of the generation that is before us.

I aim, then, to use a number of different teaching methods in my work. I am constantly seeking to develop my teaching skills. I demonstrate this by the numerous workshops and seminars I have attended. I also seek to expand students’ experience through a variety of teaching methods, including discussion, debate, journaling, breakout groups, moodle forums, blogging, wikis and glossaries, video and media integration, class readings, fully written lectures, improvised lectures from outlines, Powerpoint presentations and Prezis, dramatic monologues, thought-mapping, question-storming, and team-teaching. I continually seek to develop these methods and hone my skills as a communicator and facilitator of learning. As the ultimate goal is student engagement, I will try most any creative endeavour to draw the students into the material.

Publically Engaged Scholarship

As an emerging scholar, I am excited about the opportunities to integrate the oft-separated academic pillars of research, teaching, and service. Anticipating the metrics for networked participatory scholarship in UPEI’s draft Academic Plan, my scholarship already exists both in academic forums as well as in blogs, editorials, interviews, guest lectures, and podcasts. In continuity with my philosophy of education, I have extended the classroom and the research process into the worlds of social media. I am actively engaged on Twitter and Facebook, rooting the conversation to my popular blog on faith, fantasy, and fiction (www.aPilgrimInNarnia.com).

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Teacher of the Year!

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

I am feeling very honoured to have received the Hessian Award for Excellence in Teaching at the UPEI banquet last night. It was very moving to be honoured in such a way, before my friends and colleagues and with five other faculty members set apart for outstanding teaching or research.

I have been teaching sessionally (as an adjunct) at the University of Prince Edward Island since January 2006, missing only one academic year. Since that time, I have taught 45 courses at UPEI–very close to a full-time load. I designed the vast majority of those courses, by myself or in a team of great colleagues. UPEI was where I tested my academic mettle, discovering my own mind for integrating life and research into the classroom experience. It was also at UPEI where I first developed my work on C.S. Lewis and the Inklings as I discovered that they gave me tools for a more capacious conversation for discussions of faith, culture, and literature.

Though non-permanent academic staff are not given time for research and service, during the last decade I have also given 14 conference presentation, written 12 academic book reviews, read 3 honours theses, supervised one masters thesis, led four UPEI directed studies, written 645 blog posts, published 7 academic papers with 2 more in process, and taught more than 40 courses at undergraduate and graduate level at great schools like Maritime Christian College, Regent College, The King’s College, and Signum University. If anyone thinks that the life of an adjunct professor is one of well-supported leisure or part-time fancy, I would encourage you to take a non-permanent prof to lunch and find out about their experience. You probably should pay.

Last night, I got treated to lunch, as well as to a second helping of encouragement. As a good friend and teaching teammate gave a short introduction to the award, I found myself embarrassed in an intriguing way. I still feel like an imposter, even though I am now a veteran in this world. I have done my time and created a rigorous research and teaching portfolio. I have taught thousands of students who are all out in the wide, wide world. I have even walked the picket line, just a week after reading Marx with my students in my first semester on the job in 2006.

Though I have all this history, I still feel like I don’t belong. Part of that is the structural reality that I don’t truly belong at UPEI. As a sessional prof, I am the first to have classes reduced when budgets get tight or when tenured faculty are first in line. I am rarely able to teach in my research discipline and I have developed classes from top to toe that I only got to teach once (or sometimes not at all). I share an office, but am largely a squatter on campus as real university needs shuffle and shuffle again. I do not have a budget for research or travel; I don’t have health insurance. I am 41 and have never received a dime in retirement income or pension. I don’t even have adjunct status on campus–a higher category of non-permanent faculty that I have never achieved.

But this is the life of an adjunct/sessional/non-permanent prof. Many of you know this story. I don’t have a PhD or position, and am not entitled to these things. Yet, it is not for these reasons that I felt like an imposter as my 2 minutes of “This is Your Life” played before my eyes last night. Even if the university itself uses me for the cheap labour that I am–which I agree to–I have felt great support from those I teach with. My religious studies colleagues–one of who got the research award–have always been in my corner, as have the entire Arts and Humanities teaching team. They are genuinely interested in my work and would lend a hand if they could. This award, we should note, is from our faculty association, not the university proper. The award came from other teachers, supported by my students.

No, the imposter feeling does not come from the outside but from the heart, and I cannot shake it. Most days I still feel like a kid pretending at adult life, playing house and leveraging our finances against our dreams in an elaborate and incredibly detailed game of Life. And though I could post my “Statement of Teaching Philosophy” where I lay out my understanding of the possibilities of the classroom, it comes down to pretty simple things: creativity, imagination, strong organizational skills, an openness to new ideas, an absurd sense of hope and an incontrovertible sense of humour. Perhaps above all these things is the fact that I care. I care about my work, yes, and the material. But I care about the students–these storied lives in the most transformational and radical points of their time on earth. I suspect that’s why students like me as a teacher.

For reasons of part-mortification, part-honouring the honourers, and part-encouragement to the thousands of contract academic staff who may not have the supports that I have, I am posting the little speech that prefaced my award. Despite my imposter syndrome, I am a little pleased to have been honoured. Thank you to all–to my colleagues who put their oar in, and to Kerry, who for the first time ever missed her Kindergarten Spring Concert to be there for me. That says a lot.

Engaging. Challenging. Fair. Questioning. Insightful. Passionate. Approachable. Caring. Impactful. These words capture the essence of Breton Dickieson’s teaching. It is no wonder, then, that a former student describes Brenton as “the type of professor every student dreams of having.”

Brenton Dickieson has been a “trusted and cherished sessional instructor” in UPEI’s Religious Studies Department for over a decade. His versatility is evident from the breadth of courses he has taught over this period. Most recently, Brenton has been an integral contributor to the newly designed UPEI 102 Inquiry Studies.

It is clear that Brenton creates a classroom atmosphere that leaves students yearning for more. As one student reflects, “He is the only professor I have had in my seven years of study that I would like his classes to run longer.”

In his teaching philosophy, Brenton states that he sees “education as creating an environment for transformational experiences.” Feedback suggests he is doing just that. As one alumna wrote, “the lectures he gave are still impacting my world today. Brenton’s teaching had an immeasurable impact on my university experience.”

In recognition of your outstanding contribution to teaching at UPEI, the Faculty Association is delighted to award you with a Hessian Merit Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Sessional Instructor.

 

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A 20th Anniversary Post to Kerry

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Today is my 20th anniversary! Our house this morning was not a La La Land set, but filled the mundane tasks of laundry, breakfast, and off to school. As much as I would expect all the world to break out in celebration, jazz hands at the Dickieson home were set to tying shoes and packing lunchboxes. Still, I wanted to write a little note of celebration.

20 years. That means Kerry and I were married in a previous century, the 1900s. Kids can call that “olden times” without irony. When we were married, we used telephones to make phone calls, you had to watch television one episode at a time, and we still had hope for rock music. We are married longer than my parents even knew each other. In just a few months I’ll have been married more than half my life. All told we have been together for 23 years, 4 months, and 6 days.

On that night, January 3rd, 1993, I was terrified to ask Kerry out. Finally, after encouragement from friends, I called her from a pay phone. A pay phone! I tucked my hair up in a ponytail, found a relatively clean shirt on the floor, and picked her up in my 1985 VW Golf. Knowing what I know about women now, it was perhaps unjust of my to call her a half-hour before I picked her up. Still, she said yes.

Our first date was a safe bet: a movie. Unfortunately, we went to Beethoven 2, which is twice as lame as the VHS tape cover suggests. This is the least epic of all films to begin an epic relationship, and I have shame.

Still, Kerry’s forgiveness was great. We went on a second date: Sister Act 2, with friends, and only moderately lame. On our third date we hopped in the car and I said I would take her to Toronto. “Okay,” she said doubtfully, knowing it was a city more than a 1000 miles away. I boldly drove her to Toronto, but not the fake capital of Canada. I took her to Toronto, PEI, population 47, a single paved road intersecting a red dirt road a few miles from Anne’s Green Gables.

That night, Kerry kissed me, and to this day tries to deny that is our first kiss on some sort of technicality.

We were married on May 9, 1997 in New Glasgow, PEI, at the church where my parents were married. I realize now we threw a terrible party, but our friends and family were generous enough to enjoy it. Opening the mic to best wishes at our reception is a mistake in a family like mine with its gift of gab. But it garnered us a rendition of “When I’m 64” from Uncle Everett and a punk version of “Brown-Eyed Girl” by some of my youth group students (now captains of industry). Kerry’s eyes are hazel, but it is still one of my favourite covers.

It snowed the day after we were married. As we drove that week toward Florida on our honeymoon, we watched the seasons change along the East Coast. It is hard not to stay in Virginia forever in May. I look back enviously on a three-week honeymoon. We would use three weeks well now. We’d probably clean the garage.

As dreamy-eyed as we all are in our early stages of love, as we learn in La La Land! life has a settledness to it that is hard to imagine at the altar. I don’t remember our ceremony much—we might have that on Beta somewhere—but I know we promised to love through all the great difficulties of life. Thinking of our wedding party, there is

Thinking of our wedding party, there is loss. Kerry’s sister passed away not long after we were married. Also gone from our lives since we started dating are all our grandparents, a cousin, and most recently my mother. Some friendships have faded from that photo as well. We have suffered loss, and also great disappointment. We were together as we moved across this continent, to another continent, back to this one and then all the way across to home again. We failed in business. We lost a child that was never ours. Dreams have crumbled. And we have felt the strain of poverty move from months to years, and then to a decade.

Surprisingly, it is in none of these great valleys that marriage has been a struggle that made us worry. Is it just me, or is the time between the times the most difficult? The everydayness of Monday to Monday, the lunchboxes and parenting choices and paperwork of family life—these are the things that seem to wear on us the most. I wonder if marriage vows should supplement “for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health,” with, “and when the payment is due, the door handle is broken, and when we can’t decide what to do about our children.” Fidelity for us does not fail in the starburst moments, but fades in the times in between.

Without knowing exactly how to explain it, perhaps I saw this principle early on. Kerry and I have lived closely together for long periods of time, often apart from others. We are partners and friends and enjoy our time together. For one season, though, we were apart. I was working in Asia and Kerry in Vancouver. Reading the Odyssey, I recognized that so many readers forget the sheer length of time that Odysseus was away from his beloved. Time moved on, and what heroics meant changed its meaning as Odysseus fought through his wandering curse.

In that space, thinking of marriage as odyssey, as journey, I wrote this poem. I have never published it because I think it lacks poetic greatness, but it is the only poem I have ever written or Kerry. And it says more deeply, even in its childish, clumsy poesy, that I see our life together as a life, and for life. It is also my way of saying that the heroes and heroisms in stories don’t always look like what they seem.

I love you Kerry. Here’s to the next 20 years! Also, I took chicken out for supper and hung the whites. Happy anniversary!

Magnificent Defeat
By Brenton Dickieson

Remember, when we were young
We drank of youth and youth-fullness
Think how you blushed in my arms
And we cried in failure’s earnest sight
And shared joy in failure’s failing
When the future’s hope loomed large and near
And love’s true kiss held eternity
I lifted you above the storm, and still
You carried me

Since, I have climbed the mountain’s heights
And conquered the ocean’s watery grave
I have led armies of the living God
And sheltered lambs in the valley’s shade
Felled giants’ hands at your feet
And challenged Intelligent’s delight
I resisted Sirens’ luring glare
And drank poison from a wounded heel, and still
You carry me

True, I will grow old
And in growing failing comes
Mountains will loom large above
And waters rest on foreign shores
Pilgrims’ ways will falter soon
And enemies will prosper
My Sight will dim in Athena’s glade
And doubt gather in my throat, and still
You’ll carry me

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John Lawlor’s Memories and Reflections on C.S. Lewis

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

I have just had the delightful experience of reading John Lawlor’s book, C.S. Lewis: Memories and Reflections (1998). Prof. Lawlor was an undergraduate student of C.S. Lewis’ before and after WWII before continuing on to do his graduate work with J.R.R. Tolkien. That’s a one-two punch many of us would love to take. Lawlor was a scholar of medieval and romantic literature, working in the shadow of Lewis and remaining friends until the latter’s death. Memoirs and Reflections is a tribute book, first to friendship and then to scholarship, honouring the craft of writing both in content and form.

I don’t always love memoirs of the people I study, especially when they repeat well-worn anecdotes full of wink and whimsy. With Lawlor it is entirely different. Instead of the same old stories, we have a fresh insider look at Oxonian life at the time when Lewis was at the peak of his work as a public intellectual. The memoirs are funny, evocative, and intentionally controversial. Lawlor wants to cast himself as an outsider-insider, an arrogant student slowly won over by the awe-inspiring presence of an unmatched thinker and writer of this day. Yet it is not merely hagiographical; Lawlor sheds light on Lewis’ weaknesses as well as his strengths. Above all, the book is not cute. There is enough pretentiousness and wit for me to read it with a posh BBC accent (in my mind).

The four essays that make up the “reflections” cover the Ransom Cycle, Narnia, the theme of reason and romanticism, and Lewis as writer and scholar (or, perhaps, writer-scholar). The first essay on the Ransom Cycle is a robust and integrative summary without a true critical thesis. And it is all the better for it, taking on the tone of a senior scholar as he invites readers into a literary conversation as broad as his own. There are no footnotes, as if we are expected to have Owen Barfield or Jonathan Swift at hand to look up the full references. This essay and the one on Narnia are pieces I would send back to the senior undergraduate because they don’t provide enough links to the text. As the culmination of a lifetime of reading Lewis, though, they are marvelous reading.

The only difficult essay in the book is the one that is by far the best. In the piece where Lawlor treats Lewis as scholar and writer, he spends a great deal of time in The Allegory of Love and Lewis’ other literary historical and critical works. It is a breathtaking chapter that, when combined with the postscript, cuts to the heart of Lewis’ spirituality and integrates it with his work as literary scholar and popular writer.

Memories and Reflections is written for a very particular kind of reader. Unlike so many books about Lewis that bring the reader through burnt-over biographical lands, Lawlor expects that you know Lewis’ story pretty well and have a good sense of his work. Memories and Reflections is for the reader who loves (or hates) Lewis’ fiction and has been dabbling in the more literary work. Once you have read Alan Jacobs’ The Narnian (2005) or George Sayers’ Jack (1988), John Lawlor’s book is a great next step into just Lewis’ world and the worlds he created. It would be good to have read The Allegory of Love (1936) or The Discarded Image (1964), but the essays are worthwhile even if you are new to those great, accessible histories of medieval stories.

Honestly, I am quite surprised that I don’t hear more about this book. Harry Lee Poe and Rebecca Whitten Poe recommend it in C.S. Lewis Remembered (2006). Some biographers refer to Lawlor, including Alister McGrath, Alan Jacobs, and Joel Heck (including his book on education). This book is included in the bibliographies and in a smattering of papers, as is his Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis (1966)—meant as a retirement gift to Lewis but offered instead as a memorial volume. You can also read an essay on his experience as Lewis student in Jock Gibb’s Light on C.S. Lewis (1965), or in Lawlor’s lifetime of writings on the transformation of the university and medieval literature.

I would be inclined to challenge Prof. Lawlor on some of his readings. His gregarious use of commas to hold together gargantuan sentences is not in my taste. His use of the semicolon should be outlawed. All in all, though, Memories and Reflections is an evocative and creative look at Lewis and his work from one of his early disciples. I recommend it for readers of Lewis wanted to move beyond introductory material.

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Greatest Shakespeare Post Ever: The Top 50 Shakespeare Insults

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Readers of Shakespeare know that the Bard wrote with a wink and a burn. The reason most schools put off teaching Shakespeare until high school isn’t just the difficulty of language, but that it is awkward for teachers to explain the bawdy jokes to preteens bursting into adolescence. My teachers were all nuns until sixth grade, so thinking about the sex jokes in Shakespeare would have had its own chilling effect. But the awkwardness will be there whether it is a hot young twentysomething straight out of teacher’s college or a decaying soul as likely to die before a chalkboard as before a priest or doctor. Teaching Shakespeare to kids is a minefield of classroom guffaws and surprise parent-teacher conferences—long, difficult conferences where a parent isn’t as thrilled by Johnny’s newly expanded vocabulary as the teacher might be.

But Shakespeare has resources for the teacher besieged by the over-protective parent. In that situation, the teacher should say to the parent, “Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after voyage” (As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7). Or would that go badly? How about “Thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows” (Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, Scene 1)? Perhaps Shakespearean insults are not the right response for every situation.

Plus, not every teacher has the time to mine Shakespeare for essential insults for incurious parents and overly-officious school board Presidents and circuit court judges. Fortunately, No Sweat Shakespeare has put together the top 50 insults gleaned from the plays. I’ve included a few of my favourites below, but the link has more. Plus, they have a “Shakespeare Insult Generator,” for the creative folk, and a brilliant poster by Charley Chartwell.

Can you believe that a guy name Chartwell makes charts well? I love the world.

So, this post is for Shakespeare lovers. And for that one brilliant moment where the curious and bright kids in class caught on to the inappropriate joke before the mob. And, obvsiously, this post is not for luxurious mountain goats (Henry V, Act 4, Scene 4) or knotty-pated fools (Henry IV, Part 1, Act 2, Scene 4).

Shakespeare insult 2: Henry IV Part I (Act 2, Scene 4)

“Away, you starvelling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish!”

Shakespeare insult 3: The Taming of the Shrew (Act 3, Scene 3)

“Away, you three-inch fool!”

Shakespeare insult 6: Henry IV Part 2 (Act 2, Scene 4)

“His wit’s as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard.”

Shakespeare insult 11: Timon of Athens (Act 4, Scene 3)

“I’ll beat thee, but I would infect my hands.”

Shakespeare insult 12: All’s Well That Ends Well (Act 2, Scene 3)

“Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.”

Shakespeare insult 16: Richard III (Act 1, Scene 3)

“Poisonous bunch-backed toad!”

Shakespeare insult 17: The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act 3, Scene 5)

“The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril”

Shakespeare insult 18: The Comedy of Errors (Act 5, Scene 4)

“The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.”

Shakespeare insult 19: Henry IV Part 1 (Act 3, Scene 3)

“There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.”

Shakespeare insult 21: Henry IV Part 1 (Act 2, Scene 4)

“That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey Iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?”

Shakespeare insult 22: Henry V (Act 5, Scene 2)

“Thine face is not worth sunburning.”

Shakespeare insult 31: Henry IV Part 1 (Act 2, Scene 4)

“Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!”

Shakespeare insult 33: Richard III (Act 1, Scene 3)

“Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!”

Shakespeare insult 42: Timon of Athens (Act 4, Scene 3)

“Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon”

Shakespeare insult 47: Henry IV Part 1 (Act 2, Scene 4)

“You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish–O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!”

Oh, and here is another insult infographic I stole from my wife’s Pinterest account.

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