The Teaching Lab

{Each day in Lent 2024, I write of a room or just “room” itself. Today, a creative space within what was once “A Graduate Center for Educational Ministry.” I worked there.}

Before it was absorbed (“federated” was the preferred term) into what is now Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, VA, The Presbyterian School of Christian Education (PSCE) had a campus right across the road from the seminary. The two schools shared buildings, professors, and students, but had two distinct personalities. I won’t describe them here. It would take up too much space. (Well, OK…one thing, and maybe unfair– but I once compared my specific area at PSCE and the corresponding one at Union this way: I had little budget, but all the permission in the world. They had lots of money, but little permission.) Union focused on preparing future ordained ministers, and at PSCE students earned advanced degrees that would prepare them to be church educators.

I graduated from the seminary, and eventually worked at PSCE. Looking back, I realize I had many roles on that campus. Early on, the school provided me an office for my media ministry in radio. But later I became the Director of the Video Education Center. And while in that position, I was asked to teach Youth Ministry a couple of years, as well as co-teach a Media and Values course with my very good friend and colleague Dr. Chuck Melchert.

PSCE was a very special place. Yes, it was a graduate school. Classes in education, theology and ethics, recreation, and church leadership were stimulating and rigorous, plus the small student body made for a tight community of folk committed to stengthening the educational ministry of the wider church, including a global reach. (I remember how our professors and staff were so diligent in learning to pronounce the names of our international students. When one new international student student told us his name, he said, “But you can call me by an Amercian name [i.e., Tom], the prof said no, we want to learn and know your “real” name.)

On the basement floor of the central building on campus, PSCE had developed a “Teaching Lab,” a large room adapted for countless uses during the years I was there. It had been established primarily by two nationally respected educators, Locke Bowman and Donald Griggs. I wasn’t on campus at the time the project was intiated, so my facts need checking. {And they were! See below.} But Bowman came to PSCE as the past Executive Director of the National Teacher Education Project, a program funded jointly by the Lilly Foundation, the National Presbyterian Board of Christian Education and an anonymous donor. Don Griggs came to the school as a well-respected Presbyterian educator, author of several books (including Teaching Teachers to Teach and Generations Learning Together: Learning Activities for Intergenerational Groups in the Church), and a well-deserved reputation for cutting edge teaching/learning practices in church education.

The Teaching Lab was in use day and night as space for microteaching, learning centers, continuing education events, simulation games, video and technology training, and small group experiences. One student wag told me later that the name of the school should have been the Presbyterian School of Small Groups. The technology ranged from the days of Kodak Carousel projectors and overhead projectors to U-Matic video, video projection, and satellite feeds. The work in the room was as practical as it was theoretical, with students easily finding handles on how to move their learning in that laboratory to the classrooms of the local church.

Behind the camera at PSCE

When I came to PSCE to be Director of Video Education, Don Griggs was my educational mentor and also my “boss.” My department was called an “extended ministry” of the school, and Don was the Dean of Extended Ministries, as well as a tenured professor. The school’s adoption of video, when the equipment was just becoming practical and affordable for local churches, meant that PSCE could produce educational video programs to carry the school’s resources beyond the campus. One of our first projects was creating a Griggs-produced video called “The Art of Asking Questions,” helping teachers help students…to be more fully engaged, and to freely offer thoughts and ideas that may well enrich the whole class. We also produced Pat Griggs’ “The Art of Storytelling,” as well as a documentary we shot at seminaries around the U.S. about “The Pastor as Educator.”

The other purpose of our video ed program was to teach our students how to use the medium in local church settings. So students became familiar with camera work, video recorders, and some basic production and editing techniques. Remember, this was way before everyone had video cameras in their pockets!

But I digress, don’t I? This is about the room. Two memories stand out. I taught courses there in how to use video in the local congregation. And I was blind for one day’s class. As a volunteer in a Richmmond program to teach community leaders* about disabilities, I was blind-folded for the day and led to the campus and my classroom by an unsighted young man. Using our white canes we entered the Lab and I explained to the class that we’d go on as usual so we wouldn’t miss a day’s work. Someone thought the project for the day should be the students videotaping an interview with me and our guest. With blindfold removed for the next class, we could all critique it together.

I also think about teaching youth ministry in that Lab. Having space and technology there helped us explore the many facets of youth work that church educators would encounter in local churches. My co-teacher one term was an experienced educator from Australia, Christine Gapes. She was a delight to teach alongside and helped this novice build a thoughtful and creative syllabus, while adding her fresh perspective to the class. Having had many practical experiences in youth ministry, I hadn’t actually taught theory and concepts before, so Christine’s presence was personally reassuring.

I know I’m selling the Lab short here. But it’s enough to say that what graduate students learned in that environment made a lasting impression on their own ministries of education, whether in the context of the local congregation, running church camps and retreats, or even teaching in seminaries on the other side of the globe. It’s gone now, with the closing of the school. But I wouldn’t say that it will be a room full of memories, so much as it is still one of continuing influence, educational integrity, and life-long learning.

*Yes, I was deemed a community leader…just because I was on the radio!

{I knew I needed some facts checked, and Don Griggs read the above and clarified the story of the founding of the lab. Here’s part of what he just wrote me: “The lab was in fact, originally, a partnership with the National Teacher Education Project, founded by Locke Boman. However, the director of the Teaching Lab at PSCE was Donald MacInnes who was employed by PSCE and NTEP…Both of us were associated with Locke Bowman as consultants, writers, and occasional workshop leaders. Don was invited to be the first director of the PSCE/NTEP Teaching Lab…Don was very influential in me being called to PSCE as the first Director of Continuing Education and Associate Professor of Christian Education. (That’s another interesting story.) I arrived at PSCE on January 1, 1978, and Don left in June that same year. He felt the lab was in good hands after my arrival and knew its mission would carry on after his departure.”

I must add: It’s mission does carry on decades later as PSCE alums continue their roles as church educators.}

The Campus

The Merch

 

Mrs. Sagendorf’s Room

{Lent 2024…and my Lenten discipline is to write each day (which, I hasten to add, I don’t usually do; who has time?). I chose the theme of “room.” And on we go…}

Writing of “room” or its plural, it seems natural that a classroom would pop up in the mix. But which one? I could count dozens from kindergarten through seminary, and beyond into my teaching years. But no classroom had a teacher with a more colorful name than the one where Mrs. Sagendorf held forth.

It was fifth grade. And a new school for me in a new neighborhood. I had spent my first school years in a nearby village, but with the move across the Susquehanna to Endicott, I walked three blocks to the George Washington School. When it had been called the Loder Avenue School, my mother had gone there. And her mother had taught first (or second?) grade there. But for me, it was all new. Maybe you’ve experienced that feeling too. A strange (to you) building, full of kids you’d never seen before, and teachers whose reputations you had no way of knowing.

Mrs. Sagendorf must have seemed 80 years old to this 11 year-old kid. I recall her as fairly short, with gray frizzy hair out of control. In fact, her complexion may have been a bit gray too. A stern, sharp-featured face that was nonetheless capable of a gentle smile. And it turns out, a compassionate soul.

First day. You know, some memories remain fresh even 68 years later! Oddly, I recall my very first day in Mrs. Sagendorf’s class. We played a game where a few students stood in front of the class and we had to make a guess that asked, “Was it you, [name]?” The detail of the actual game is cloudy, but this is firm in my memory banks: I asked, “Was it you, Cyril?” And some students chuckled.

“I’m not Cyril; I’m Don,” the boy replied, smiling. Oh oh. My face was red. My first public 5th grade goof. Mrs. Sagendorf was so kind to quickly move from my momentary embarrassment a good-natured reminder that being the new boy in class it would take some time to learn all those new names. Now, that wasn’t a traumatic episode in my fifth grade life. It was just a plain old episode. But that I recall it so clearly…well, it must have meant something to be so firmly imprinted as a permanent memory. Don would become one of my best friends in that school. And two students who were very understanding that day remain in my circle of friends even now! Jill Clark and Jackie Greene.

(Jackie just told me that Mrs. Sagendorf’s students bought her a small bird from a local pet store for her birthday. A lot of affection there.)

Mrs. Sagendorf was quite a comfort the day I bit through my lower lip doing somersaults in gym class. Never anything close to an athlete, I was awkward even doing the most basic sporty stuff like tumbling. In the gym, Coach Conwicke had us fifth graders somersaulting on thick rubber mats, and as I landed, my teeth intercepted my lips. I bled. And I hurt. And the coach sent me back to our empty classroom for some first aid. I was trying so hard to not cry. Mrs. Sagendorf showed such concern, offered comfort, and assured me it was OK to shed some tears before the other kids came back to the room. She delivered me to the infirmary.

Many of my classmates stayed together through ninth grade, and merged with students from the other junior high school in the village as we entered tenth grade and high school. Lots of classrooms in between and after, but Mrs. Sagendorf’s room was one best remembered. I regret that it never occurred to me to thank her for her kindness. You know, one school year leads to another, one class yields to the next, and teachers are sometimes just taken for granted. We move on leaving them behind. Maybe this remembrance will atone. Anyone you need to thank– while you can?

Oh, and with gratitude to Mrs. Sagendorf, it was under her tutelage that I was first published. See the clipping from the Lode Star yearbook. I wrote that with many prompts from my teacher. But look! I’m still reading and writing real good, smiling as I type.