From the Classroom
-
Why Grammar?
Perhaps you’ve seen the meme floating around with a terrified grandma quaking beneath a sign that reads “let’s eat Grandma!” followed by a sign that reads “let’s eat, Grandma!” At the very bottom of the image we have the punch line: punctuation saves lives! With the single insertion of a comma, we are told, cannibalizing Continue reading
-
Fall and the Coming Renewal (5)
Every year around this time I move from hating (but tolerating) the summer sun and heat to actively hating it. The reason for this (I surmise) is that this is the time of the year when school restarts, and it seems monstrous to me to have school starting while it is summer outside! In any Continue reading
-
Fall and the Coming Renewal (3)
Every year around this time I move from hating (but tolerating) the summer sun and heat to actively hating it. The reason for this (I surmise) is that this is the time of the year when school restarts, and it seems monstrous to me to have school starting while it is summer outside! In any Continue reading
-
Literature as a Mode of Knowledge
During the last three weeks of July I had the marvelous opportunity to participate in a program at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. This program is for K-12 teachers and its purpose to get teachers reading the Classics, writing about them, hearing lectures, and discussing them with each other in seminar. This summer Continue reading
-
Great Books vs Technocracy and Academics
The biggest difference that I see between the kind of education I received and the kind of education my students are receiving is located in the telos toward which each system of education is ordered. The kind of education I received was ordered toward me having success in college or in the workforce; it was Continue reading
-
And We Think WE Have Political Problems?
What follows comes from my 8th graders’ history textbook: As Parliament still refused to give Charles money and soldiers to put down this rebellion, the king tried to frighten the members by marching into their place of meeting with his guards, to arrest five of the principal men, among whom were the patriots of Hampden Continue reading
-
Christian Marriage: Difference and Mutuality
This past week, my students and I began working our way through Merchant of Venice. In order to give my students a grid for reading the play, we spent a couple of class periods working our way through Louise Cowan’s conception of the genre of Comedy. In order to get to Comedy, however, I needed Continue reading
-
The Virtuous Life Part 3: Gentillesse
Gentillesse is a concept in Middle English that is usually translated as “nobility.” In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, for example, Theseus (in “The Knight’s Tale”), the knight (in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”), and various characters involved in a love triangle (in “The Franklin’s Tale”) all exhibit some form of gentillesse. Perhaps the medievalists among us Continue reading
-
The Birth of Venus
My students and I have been working through the Italian Renaissance over the last couple of weeks. Like most people when asked what they think of when they think of the Renaissance, my students initially thought of the great artists. They thought of the Renaissance as this period of time when geniuses walked the earth Continue reading
-
Why I Teach Humanities
The following is a modified version of a piece I wrote for the headmaster at my school explaining why we teach Literature, Theology, and History together as a single subject, called Humanities, in the seventh and eighth grades. I hope it helps explain the joy I’ve found these last few months doing what I do. Continue reading
-
Teaching What I Never Learned
cov My students have a midterm exam on Monday. They have to be able to account for Roman history from Augustus through the fall, church history from the beginning through the seven ecumenical councils, English history through the establishment of the seven kingdoms, and French/German history through the split of the Holy Roman Empire into Continue reading
-
Why the Blood Moons Have Nothing To Do with the Bible
I’ve now seen one too many links on Facebook to problematic theories about the prophetic nature of the blood moons. Specifically, most of the stuff I’ve seen connects the blood moons to End of the World kinds of things or at least to God’s supposed concern for current geopolitical arrangements involving Israel. Not that I’m an expert Continue reading
-
Beowulf and the Fear of Death
My 8th graders started Beowulf on Tuesday and I’ve gotten a range of responses. I heard from students who express the usual “it’s so confusing and weird” all the way to “if Beowulf is a Christian, how come he gets so excited about killing?” Something that a number of my students are concerned with is Continue reading
-
The Fall of Rome and The Walking Dead
In my 8th grade Humanities class (I teach a class that combines History, Theology, and Literature), Rome fell on Wednesday. She collapsed under the weight of barbarian invasion from without and the rottenness of her political and economic systems from within. Odacer, the barbarian general who took the title King of Italy, grew tired of Continue reading
-
Rhetorical Inquiry, the Public Good, and Progressive Political Assumptions
This is the latest post in a series on assigned readings for one of my classes. The book assigned for next week’s Foundations of Composition and Rhetoric Class is called Distant Publics. Aside from the book we read on Composition Pedagogies, this is the work that I am resonating the most with. The book explores Continue reading
-
Discussion of Participatory Composition
This is my latest post in the series I am doing reflecting on readings from my Foundations of Composition and Rhetoric class. My reading for next week was the first three chapters of Participatory Composition: Video Culture, Writing, and Electracy. While this book is interesting, I have a couple of hesitations. First, what is the Continue reading
-
My Life and My Work: Toward a Synthesis
I’ve spent the first half of this semester doing two main things: changing diapers and resisting the dominant intellectual currents in my field. * * * My daughter, Ellie, is over a month old now. She is adorable and sweet and always hungry. She is perverse, preferring to wait until she has a clean diaper Continue reading
-
Civic Rhetoric in the Classroom
This is the fourth post in the the series I am doing discussing readings from my Foundations of Composition and Rhetoric Class. The first two posts (here and here) concerned Kenneth Burke‘s A Rhetoric of Motives. Last week, however, I began discussing A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. In last week’s post, I discussed my fraught relationship to Continue reading
-
The Problem with So-Called Critical Pedagogy
This is my third blog post in my ongoing series reflecting on what I am reading in my Foundations of Composition and Rhetoric Class. The last two blog posts (which you can find here and here) concerned Kenneth Burke’s A Rhetoric of Motives. While very interesting, his work was definitely in the realm of theory. This Continue reading
-
Toward a Burkean Civic Rhetoric
This is my second post in the series I am doing reflecting on readings from my Foundations of Composition and Rhetoric Class. For this week, we were assigned to finish reading Kenneth Burke’s A Rhetoric of Motives. You can find my first post about mystery in Burke here. In this post, I want to briefly explore one Continue reading
About Me
Gregory C. Jeffers
Anglican Christian | Husband | Father | Teacher | Scholar | Poet
G. C. Jeffers 