This weekend, I learned so much about how to create a great learning environment. I didn’t limit this information to formal classroom settings; I decided I could apply the ideas to my home life and my own life as a student. I want, after all, to remain a great student for the entirety of my life.
I learn that great teaching happens in environments of wonder and awe. The teacher and student both assume positions of humility before the greatness of the subject. They connect with one another as they pursue truth.
If ever I’m bored with semicolons, I know that I’ve lost the wonder of language and the beauty of effective communication that enables a profound mystery. We’re ordering thoughts here. We’re incarnating. We’re doing something so incredible to get the voice in your head onto the page. When we fall in love with the subject again, we remember the joy of this teaching and learning task.
I want beauty and wonder to invade us through these lessons on rhetoric and grammar. Because it’s always about more than the thing itself. It’s always about allegory, myth, and a greater narrative.
Even the semicolon tells a great story.