I’m in West Palm Beach, getting ready to fly out of Miami on Saturday to Havana. I will be teaching a week-long class on discipleship to a great group of students. This is my fourth time there, and I am looking forward to seeing them again.
Needless to say, I’ll be out of contact for a few days, but I will be back next week, and I hope to have lots of great stories and pictures for you.
We are excited to share with you all about the graduation of youth ministry students in the Ukraine. Mike and Judy Manna, our coworkers in the Ukraine, sent us this picture of the first 5 graduates from the Center for Youth Ministry there.
In the picture, Mike is sitting in the front row (right hand side) along with Randy Smith, the president of Youth Ministry International.
Mike and Judy are doing what we are doing, but they are doing it in a different part of the world using a different language. It’s awesome to see the fruit of their hard work. We are happy with them to see what God is doing in their ministry.
One of the hardest things about teaching is the evaluation process. Tests that are easily graded are the least effective in actually evaluating if the student has mastered the content. In other words, if a test has pure multiple choice questions, it is really easy to grade but doesn’t tell me if my student has understood the class content.
Because I’m always teaching for understanding, I have to design tests that are more like a conversation with the student. In other words, I have to make a test that is more difficult to grade. An essay test is more difficult to grade, but it tells me a lot about their understanding. I guess what I’m saying that in order to have a good evaluation of the student, I have to do a lot of work after the class by grading a ton of essay questions.
