student learning

Like most of my colleagues, I’ve noticed a sharp drop in my first-year students’ writing and reading skills during the pandemic. And they are unfocused. Forget herding cats—trying to keep a classroom of first years on topic now feels more like herding bumble bees. More of them skip ...

Yesterday I was doing my walk and I found this little newborn bird on a sidewalk. She was alive and gasping for food. Her eyes were still closed and there were only few very thin feathers on her back. I was so lost I didn’t know what to do. ...

In my previous post (the second in a series of three) I reflected on deep learning as part of the formative educational process. I explored what it might look like to focus on students and the world they live in rather than on teaching our own particular (and often narrow) ...

A “glacial erratic” on Skidegate, Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada (photo by author) “Could God create a stone too heavy for God to lift?” This question may be familiar to those of us who teach about the traditional qualities of God in the philosophy of religion classroom. The so-called “paradox ...

“You are a creature in the midst of creation.” Those words, which I have heard or recited in versions of the Ignatian Examen countless times in the past decade, kept returning to my mind as we gathered in our outdoor classroom. That space and time made it possible to better ...