Tag Archives: education

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teaching content vs. teaching a skill

Sometimes I wish I could be an engineering professor.

Let me unpack that statement, beginning with a massive disclaimer: NOBODY wants me to teach engineering. If I taught any form of engineering, even to a small group of students, you would begin to see news stories of bridges collapsing, neighborhoods losing electricity, chemical factories blowing up, and solenoids failing (if you don’t know what a solenoid is, don’t worry; neither did I before I married a magnetic design engineer). That’s not because I’m a bad teacher but because I don’t have the content knowledge necessary to teach engineering. This might sound obvious, but it’s an important statement that forms the crux of this post.

The other day, my magnetic engineer husband (yes, he has a magnetic personality, and he also works with magnets) and I were talking about the difference between his college experience and mine. The conversation was sparked by an anecdote we had heard about an engineering professor who bragged about how few students passed his final exam. I expressed my exasperation with this kind of thinking, and while Jordan agreed that this is nothing to brag about, he said he did understand and mostly support the concept of engineering professors designing their exams to be difficult (especially in early courses designed to separate the truly capable and serious future engineers from those who thought they’d take an intro course for fun). He pointed out the impracticality, even the danger, of students graduating from an engineering program without really knowing the content and concepts of the field, and explained how tests are one of the best ways of ensuring graduates have the requisite knowledge (second only to hands-on design projects).

I begrudgingly agreed. I knew he was right in the context of engineering, but that gatekeeping mindset is so antithetical to the way I teach writing that I’m used to cringing whenever I see it. The difference, of course, is that writing isn’t a content-driven discipline. Some would argue with me here–there is a whole field of composition that has essential readings and concepts. I recognize and respect composition as a discipline, and I think that disciplinary knowledge is crucial for people who want to dedicate their lives to the teaching and research of writing. But I don’t think it’s necessary for people who simply want to learn how to write. Writing is a skill, and the best way to learn it is to do it (while receiving quality feedback to make sure it’s being done well). That explains why my students earn their grades not by taking tests to prove they know concepts about good writing, but by doing lots of writing, which allows them to practice the skill over and over and eventually reach significant improvement, if not mastery. Mastery is difficult to demonstrate because the definition of “excellent writing” is notoriously subjective, which is why English teachers are all going to prioritize different things in our grading, no matter how hard we try to standardize the process through rubrics, norming sessions, and other efforts.

This explains why I don’t worry too much about whether we’re compromising our standards as a university by allowing students to graduate from our writing programs who probably aren’t going to win any Pulitzer Prizes or who maybe will never even get published. Every student’s goals and reasons for getting a degree in writing are different, and I don’t think it’s my place to judge students by a standard that has nothing to do with their goals. Of course, there are graduation standards students have to meet–e.g., if they’re writing a master’s thesis, it needs to meet a minimum length requirement. And yes, I absolutely do my best to teach students good argumentation, research, and sentence construction skills. But especially when we’re talking about creative writing, there’s a fine line–easily stumbled across–between teaching these skills and trying to reproduce students who write exactly the way we do.

I opened the post by saying I sometimes wish I could teach engineering because I sometimes wish I could have a more objective standard by which to grade–that I could simply mark my students’ work right or wrong. (And by the way, I’m sure there is room for creative approaches in engineering; I realize I’m stereotyping a bit to make my point.) But most of the time, I’m thankful I get to teach a skill that allows me to come alongside students in something resembling a mentoring relationship, even if that means I sometimes obsess way too long over which rubric category to click.

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teaching as an act of care

I just reread my post from February in which I promised to post more often, beginning with a version of a conference presentation I gave in January. I’m embarrassed that it’s July and I haven’t shared that post. Instead of rewriting the presentation into an essay, I’ve decided to share an outline of my talking points. I hope you find something relevant in it, regardless of your calling.

The title of the presentation was Love in Action, and its purpose was to remind us (myself and fellow Christian university faculty) of the value of caring work and to identify ways in which teaching is caring work. I began with the following reasons why the topic is important:

1. AI has made “am I talking to a real person?” a crucial question.

    2. Students are intimidated by their professors.

    3. Students who feel safe are more willing to take intellectual risks.

    4. Most importantly, if we take our calling as Christian faculty seriously, our work is a ministry.

    These claims were based mainly on the following sources:

    •Anecdotal evidence based on ten years of teaching online “full-time” (and a lot of course evaluations to back me up!)

    •Books on Christian love in action: Real Love for Real Life by Andi Ashworth and Making Room by Christine Pohl

    •Findings from a doctoral research project by Nat Mercer (my colleague at Grace Christian University)

    This quote from Ashworth was foundational to my thinking on this topic: “Hospitality can also mean sitting with another person over coffee, showing an interest in who they are” (p. 71, emphasis mine). I asked my audience, “Can this happen in a virtual setting as well?”

    The remainder of my presentation was set up as a series of real or perceived contrasts.

    Contrast 1: Important work vs. recognized work: Crucial work can be done in secret, as we see in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. While it is valuable for faculty members to be able to articulate the work we do, not all tasks are easily trackable.

    • Principle: Work doesn’t have to be financially compensated to be important, and there is value in doing work that isn’t formally rewarded.
    • Caveat: This shouldn’t be used as excuse not to fairly compensate people for their work.
    • For example, as an adjunct working on a contract basis, I get paid for teaching my courses. At a bare minimum, that means giving feedback on assignments and recording grades. But is meeting with students who want to talk about their career future also teaching? What about writing recommendation letters? What about reading a book I’ll later recommend to a student? (I think the answer to these questions is “yes”!)

    Contrast 2: Creative work vs. busy work: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” –David Allen, Getting Things Done

    Allowing space for creativity is related to allowing space for serving others.

    Overcommitted faculty have less capacity to notice others’ needs and create ways to serve them.

    Principle: Caring takes creativity.

    Contrast 3: Students: problems or people?

    I know I need a “heart check” when I start thinking of my students as problems, annoyances, or tasks to deal with.

    Practical ways to remind myself that my students are people: praying for them by name, offering/saying yes to phone/Teams conversations

    Principle: If we want our students to think of us as real people and not just machines that grade their work, we also owe it to them to view them as people.

    Contrast 4: Rigorous vs. relational (which turns out not to be a contrast after all)

    Attachment theory posits that people with “a secure base from which to explore the world” are more willing to take healthy risks.

    Nat’s research on academic rigor and faith integration: “the impact of the expression of grace and mercy by professors and the way students persist as a result of these values”—Nat Mercer, email communication, 1/6/2026

    Principle: Being kind and caring toward our students does not mean compromising academic rigor.

    Contrast 5: Transactional vs. self-giving

    I read the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, which gives a concrete picture of self-giving love. I also cited the research on servant leadership by Robert Greenleaf.

    Biblical servanthood is not reciprocal—Jesus didn’t sit down and ask his followers to wash his feet, nor did he resent them for not doing so. But he did tell them to do the same for each other!

    Principle: Teaching can be incredibly rewarding, but even when it isn’t, God calls us to keep giving.

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    What online instructors want from their students

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the misconceptions–or complete mystification–some online students have about what their professors are looking for. In an asynchronous online class, there’s no regular meeting time when students can ask questions and professors can pointedly emphasize certain desired behaviors. I don’t want my students to have to guess what my expectations are for them–nobody likes that game. While every instructor will have expectations specific to each of their courses, there are some that, at least in my opinion, transcend contexts. In this post, I’m going to list and briefly explain several of these close-to-universal expectations.

    1. We want you to write like a real person, not a robot. I’ve been saying this for years, but the recent revolution in accessible generative AI tools has made this advice particularly urgent and very literal! An essay written by ChatGPT and an essay written by a student in a stilted, impersonal academic-ese, while ethically different, are both really boring to read. I want to get to know you through your writing, especially in an online class where writing is about the only thing we have to build a relationship on. Let your own voice come through!
    2. We want you to communicate with us. Often, students who email me will preface their message by saying something like “I’m so sorry to bother you.” I always reassure these students that answering their questions is what I’m paid to do and that my best teaching often happens through email. Again, since you’re not sitting in a classroom with me, I don’t have that weekly or daily time to check that you’re understanding the material and doing okay in life in general. If you’re turning in assignments, at least I know you’re alive, but I’ve found that the students who do best in online classes are those who communicate with me outside of assignments–asking questions, running ideas by me, letting me know what you think of the course materials, etc. And this might go without saying, but if you’re not turning in assignments and you’re not emailing me, then I have no choice but to assume that you’ve fallen off the face of the earth! I would much rather receive an email explaining that it’s been a hard week and asking for an extension than receive no communication at all. Talk to me!
    3. We want you to read our feedback. This one may sound like a pet peeve rant (“I spent all that time writing feedback and they didn’t even read what I wrote!”), but there’s more to it than that. I guess I can’t speak for all instructors here, but I try to grade with the goal of helping my students on future assignments, both in my class and later classes. I don’t make as many grading corrections as I used to (I was trained in the bleeding red pen school), but the comments I do leave are substantial and, I sincerely hope, constructive. If you don’t read my feedback, you’re missing out on a big part of what you’re paying for in my class. If an assignment has a rubric (and I think rubrics are used pretty much across the board in online education today), find out how to open and read the filled-out rubric–otherwise, you don’t know why you lost the points you did, and you’re left to assume the professor just doesn’t like you. I can’t promise that I like all my students (that’s a different topic for a different post!), but I never deduct points just because–the rubric always makes it clear!

    I’ll stop there for now, because those are by far the three biggest expectations I have for my online students. Of course, students also have a right to know what they can expect from their professors, so look for a future post on that!