Gotta love the hood.
Archive for the “School” CategoryI went up to the field ed office this morning to turn in my last report for the semester, and while I was there I asked how close I was to fulfilling the 300 hour requirement. That would be a good thing to know, since it would determine whether or not I get a diploma in a week and a half. As it turned out, that last report was unnecessary, since I had already passed the 300 hour mark. FIELD ED IS DONE!!!!!!!!!! This semester I’m taking the class Prophetical Books. Since this is a class that seminary students usually end up taking during their last year and the professor feels that we should get some experience as participants in a presbytery meeting before we graduate, every time he teaches the class he incorporates a mock presbytery into the curriculum. Periodically throughout the semester, we study an issue related to the prophets and then use a class period to convene as a presbytery in order to attempt to pass a motion establishing some position on the issue as a doctrinal standard. (Not once this semester did we ever actually accomplish this.) In addition to participating on the floor, once during the semester each person gets to take on a special role such as moderator, clerk, or committee member—the committees being the ones who bring the motions about the issues at hand to the floor. I had the fortune to be assigned the role of moderator for our meeting 2 weeks ago. While the committee members are responsible for writing motions and the clerk is responsible for taking the minutes, the moderator gets to make the docket and lead the meeting. Being the technologically inclined person that I am, I decided to forgo writing the docket on the blackboard, as had been done previously, in favor of using the room’s video projector to display a PowerPoint docket. With my trusty iBook running my PowerPoint docket, I put my knowledge of Robert’s Rules of Order that I had learned during Jan term in PCA Polity to use keeping the meeting focused and moving quickly. I used to think that I’d make a good clerk of presbytery someday, but now I’m starting to think that I might make a good moderator too. Related to the mock presbyteries, there is also an assignment that each student pass an “examination for licensure to teach from the OT prophetical books”. This is basically an oral exam covering a pool of about 70 potential questions based on our textbook that can either be taken in one of the mock committees or on the floor of the mock presbytery. For various reasons—including procrastination, not wanting to have to deal with scheduling another meeting, and pure guts—I decided to opt for the floor exam, which I did yesterday. I used the awesome flashcard app Genius to cram the answers to the possible questions in my head as best I could, and I tried to maintain as calm and confident an attitude as possible. When I was called to the front for the exam—I was the only one in the entire class to opt for the floor exam all semester, incidentally—I was a bit more nervous than I thought I would be. Perhaps that had something to do with the fact that I was not confident that I could nail more than 50% of the questions with ease. However, my anxiety was soon relieved as my classmates shied away from the questions about dates and kings contemporary to the prophets, which I didn’t know so well, and instead asked more conceptual questions, which I knew much better. After several questions—all of which I nailed with no problem—the motion to arrest the examination was made, and my mock licensure was approved. If only it were that easy in real life! Blog? What? Oh yeah… You may be interested in what I’ve been doing the past few weeks. M-F, Jan 4-9 - First class of the Jan-term, “Relationships in God’s Image” with Scotty Smith. Class held all morning and afternoon. M-F, Jan 12-16 - Second class of the Jan-term, “PCA Polity”. Class held all morning. Sat, Jan 17 - Adult Nurture Team meeting in the morning. Sun, Jan 18 - Presbytery-wide Sanctity of Life Sunday evening service hosted by my church. I help get everything set up all afternoon. Tue, Jan 20 - Presbytery meeting all afternoon. Missions Team meeting in the evening. Wed, Jan 21 - I take the PCA Polity take-home final. Staff meeting. Then, coming up… Tonight - Youth Group LAN party. Monday - Registration Tuesday - Session meeting Wednesday - Spring semester starts. Jan-term assignments due. Yowza! |
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