This article reflects on an instructor's experience of incorporating an optional assignment in a theology class wherein students are invited to learn a new athletic skill, journal while doing so, and then theologically reflect on their experience. It begins with the instructor making a case for the need to bring the body back into the classroom.…

Assessing the potential impact and utility of course assignments are often a matter of informed, yet personal judgment. Here, in this article, doing our own assignments before assigning them to students is explored as a quality assurance measure and as a means to ensure an empathetic and critical approach to developing course work.

Amy Lynch-Biniek begins by introducing popular yet controversial concepts presented in the Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's "They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing" (NY: Norton & Company, 2006). As stated in the book's introduction, the goal of Graff and Birkenstein's text is "to demystify academic…

For this essay, the author takes as an organizing premise Jodi O'Brien and Judith A. Howard's notion of responsible authority--that "teaching is a value-based activity" in which educators should be striving to engage students in academic pursuits in order to create a moral citizenry. That is, educators need to acknowledge that they wield the power…